Remember
by RoseblossomWarrior
Summary: They're stuck in a world that they have no clue about. They can't remember how they got there. They can barely remember who they are. But they do know that they have to get out, that they have to escape, or go down fighting.
1. Prologue

**DISCLAIMER: I don't own Shaman King!**

_Hi there :D Rose here; before I get too far into this, let me say this: HAPPY BIRTHDAY REN! :D_

_Okie dokie, now that that's out of the way (I want to make a cake o.o), let's get on with this. I **wrote this in one month for NaNoWriMo**. So, this could seem rushed in a few places. I also wrote this with any details **coming from my messed up memory**, so if there are any mistakes, I apologize. The only thing I didn't really use from memory was **Chocolove, I looked him up on Wikipedia 'cause, I'll admit, I don't know him that well, as I haven't completely read the manga and the anime doesn't do a good portrayal of him. **_

_**Some elements of the story are a mix of the Japanese and English dub. Just telling you: one character will be called, through most of the story, by their English name. If you don't like it, either deal with it or don't read, I honestly can't stand when I'm on youtube and read the comments about how the English "sucks." I'm not going to bring this point up again in any author note.**_

_Okay :D now that that's settled, Happy Birthday Again Ren :D The prologue is short, but most of the chapters are at least 1.5k in length, not short but definitely not long. One last thing I'll point out right now is that this story will become really violent later on. Violent and scary, at least to me. I'll update it once or twice a week, at the same time I update "Muffled."_

_Enjoy :D_

**Prologue**

It had been a simple trip to Izumo for summer break. Just enough time to enjoy one week with all of them there, minus Ryu, who was taking his own trip with his gang, and Faust, who was spending some _more _quality time with Eliza.

On the first day, there had been six squabbles between HoroHoro and Ren, and several times Ren had threatened to kill them all if Chocolove even _thought_ about making one more bad joke, especially with that banana he'd put in his pocket on the chance that Ren would say 'bakana.' Over all, it had been a good day.

That was, until, Tamao came rushing into the room sobbing.

Yoh had known that there had been a recent problem with demons coming from another dimension and wreaking havoc in Izumo, but he had assumed that his family had taken control of it. He hadn't thought that they would be a danger. He hadn't thought that they would take anyone.

Now, they stood silently as Anna, Yohmei, and Mikihisa studied them. They had been told the dangers of entering the world of the monstrous demons, but they had come back all right from the Chou Senji Ryakketsu, hadn't they? They had survived the battle with Hao. They could take this world and the dangers thrown at them. After all, if they didn't go in, who would rescue Manta?

Finally, Yohmei gave a grunt of assent, and Anna turned and used her beads to open the portal. The boys looked at each other and nodded before stepping in. Yoh was last.

He was about to enter when he suddenly heard the slightest whisper from Anna.

"If you don't come back, you'll wish I would kill you."

Yoh turned and gave her a smile. "It'll all work out."

With that, he finally stepped into the portal, and for a long time, there was nothing at all.


	2. One

**DISCLAIMER: I don't own Shaman King!**

_Okay, I'm having Mosuke be in this story. I can't remember if he stuck around at the end of the anime, but I've decided that he did, so HA. Author's decision. XD_

_Don't know if I want to have any notes on a chapter just yet. FFnet messed up the format a bit, so I apologize for any... odd stuff. Italics out of place, paragraphs out of place, all that jazz._

_Enjoy! (Happy Birthday Ren :D)_

**One**

_Intense, warm, and terrifying power surged through him. He felt invincible with the strength of all those he knew. Nothing could stop him, but he could stop that person now._

_It was so easy. What had once been an impossible task, the dream of a dream, was now reachable. With the new power from everyone coursing through his veins, he slashed out vertically with his spiritual sword, sending out a wave of pure, fatal energy. At the last second possible, his eyes met with the wide, unbelieving ones of that person._

_And then, everything was white._

He woke up with a scream, bolting upright and breathing more heavily than he could ever remember. In fact...

"Yoh-dono!" Immediately, out of thin air, a spirit appeared, well-muscled with white hair and dark eyes with twin katana sheaths strapped to either side of his waist. His slightly tanned face was etched with concern.

"I... I'm fine," the boy replied after a moment, holding his head with one hand as he slowly regained his breath.

_I...I'm Yoh... Right? ...Yes, I am, and he..._

"Amidamaru!" he breathed, looking up. The brown-haired boy could just barely recall giving the spirit a... katana so that the six hundred year old samurai would join him for...something. There was a slight ache in Yoh's lean muscles under his open-button shirt and dark green pants (even in his feet), and he recalled hours upon hours of training as a...shaman, yes, in order to become stronger.

_But for what? _the boy thought in confusion. The memory of his dream flashed behind his eyes, more violent and bloody than he had first thought. _Was it all to...to kill that person?_  
_"_Yoh-dono," the samurai said, looking around. "I... do not know where we are, or how we got here." He sent a slightly frightened look towards his master. "All I know is that I've sworn loyalty to you."

Yoh stood and looked around, his brows furrowing as he took in the white, foggy space. For as far as he could see, there was flat, brown land, laden with a thick mist that was _everywhere_. There was nothing more, there was nothing less.

"I don't understand...," Yoh muttered, scratching his cheek. His hand brushed something other than his brown locks on his head, and he pulled the object off to see that it was a set of orange headphones.

Something urgent clicked in his mind as he jammed the headphones back on his head, tucking them behind his ears. "If I don't get home and cook dinner soon, she'll make me sit in the invisible chair all night!"

Amidamaru shifted from his human form to his spirit ball form - a tiny, bluish blob of his normal appearance, complete with his bangs and katanas, and passed past his master's shoulder to look at him. "Who's 'she'?" he asked in confusion.

Yoh blinked and looked at the sky - or, at least, he _thought _it was the sky. It was hard to tell directions in this weird dimension. "I... I think... 'she' is my...girlfriend, maybe?" He suddenly looked terrified. "Oh my God, if she knows that I forgot about her, she'll _kill _me through training!"

Amidamaru gave his master a strange look before shaking his head. "Yoh-dono, I think it would be wise to look for a way out."

Yoh nodded, pulling himself out of his thoughts of horror. "That's a good idea, Amidamaru." He looked around, and then chose a random direction and started walking, deciding to push his dream aside for now.

()()()()()()()()()()

_Scenes flashed in his mind. None of them truly made sense, there was a recurring face: a boy with easygoing features and kind, heavy-lidded, ebony eyes with brown hair adorned with a set of orange headphones. There were also others, but they were much harder to make out._

_Many facts also went through this head, but none especially significant, except, however, for..._

"I have a test today," he mumbled, rolling over onto his stomach. He grimaced at the feeling, though; his face was moist, and his pillow didn't feel all that soft. Grumbling, he lifted his head and pushed himself up, holding his head as a sudden, dull headache came on.

"Great," he mumbled, wiping the sleep from his eyes. What a way to start an important day - in mental pain.

"Manta?"

The impossibly short, dirty-blond-haired boy screamed in shock and jumped to his feet, pointing at the spiritual man with more muscles than seemed to be humanly possible. "_Mosuke_? What are you doing in my room?"

The short-haired spirit jumped slightly in response to the boy's startled yell. "We're not in your room!" he retorted. Mosuke wore a dark yukata with a large mallet slipped through the ties, and he had a small goatee. In comparison to the rest of his body (which had been built on the career of being a sword smith), his head seemed tiny. Suddenly looking slightly meeker, he added, "I don't know where we are."

Now panicked, Manta's head darted around as he frantically took in the fog-filled world. There was absolutely nothing recognizable at all other than himself and Mosuke. Just nothing but land hidden by mist.

Manta held is head in both hands as he tried to block out his fear and concentrate. _Okay... So, I don't know where I am..._

Manta's eyes suddenly widened.

_My name... My name is Manta... Manta..._

"Oh my God...," he whispered, completely ignoring Mosuke's look of mixed confusion and anxiety. "I... I can't remember my last name."

Manta wracked his brain, searching for information. He found information quick enough, but nothing about _himself_. The only things close to being personal were that Mosuke was apparently his spiritual ally, although he was definitely not a shaman of merit or birth...

...And then there was that boy, the boy he had seen in that dream, with the brown hair. Manta pictured the boy in his mind, and suddenly he found an identity for him: _Yoh-kun._ His best friend.

"_Yoh-kun_!"he yelled, cupping his hands around his mouth. Surely he and Mosuke couldn't be alone out here.

"Manta!" Quickly, Mosuke slapped a palm over the boy's mouth, effectively silencing him and earning a scared but vehement glare. In a hushed voice, Mosuke explained, "Don't speak too loud. We don't know what's out here."

Though Manta wasn't happy, he had to admit that the spirit was right, and he nodded. Slowly, Mosuke pulled his hand back and freed Manta, who suddenly shivered as if cold.

"Do you think there's a way out?" he whispered, looking over his shoulder at the paranoia-induced feeling of being watched.

"I don't know anything - I can't remember much at all," Mosuke admitted quietly, deciding that he had to keep as brave a face as possible for Manta. "I don't think we should just sit around, though," he suggested. "We should probably get a move on; I doubt someone will be able to find us if we stay here."

Manta shuddered. "What if the thing looking for us is something we don't want to know about?" He could vaguely remember one time he had integrated Mosuke into an object to create a physical weapon – something that was called 'oversoul.' It had been very tiring, to say the least. If the two wanted to defend themselves, they would have a hard time of doing it.

Mosuke eyes darkened. "Let's cross that bridge when we get to it," he advised.

()()()()()()()()()

A soft cooing sounded in the boy's ear, causing him to stir slightly. He grumbled for five more minutes of sleep and began to drift back into dreamland, only to have the noise continue in higher pitch and loudness. Grumpily, he waved his hand to swat at whatever was causing him to wake, and he rolled over, away from the source of the noise.

…_Can't get any sleep around here… _he thought, almost back in blissful unconscious again.

Suddenly, the noise repeated itself in such a high frequency and intensity, causing the boy to jerk up to a sitting position and look around wildly.

The boy had pale skin and black eyes, but as far as basic normalcy got, it ended there. He wore blue shorts, black shoes, and a ski jacket with rectangular-like markings, which were repeated in a headband that he wore to keep his spiky blue hair up. Strapped to the back of his jacket was a snowboard with the same markings on his jacket and headband.

A tiny little feminine spirit floated down in front of him, and he calmed. "Kororo…" He looked around at his surroundings – a flat, grassless land shrouded in fog. "…Do you know where we are?" he asked slowly, shivering slightly in the damp air.

Kororo shook her head, letting out a coo of dissent, unable to speak any human language.

The boy's brows furrowed as he attempted to remember how they had gotten to this…strange place. When he came up with no answer, he frowned as he dug deeper.

He paused suddenly, coming upon something that set the hairs on the back of his neck standing up.

_I… Who am I…?_

()()()()()()()()

Yoh looked from side to side as he walked, unable to shake the feeling that he was being watched. There was a small part in the back of his mind that told him he would be able to defend himself if he was attacked, and a strong part just told him to relax. However, with most of his memories somehow stripped away, he felt vulnerable, and no matter how hard he tried, he kept seeing the wide eyes of that unknown person in his dream…

Not wanting to remember anything related to the person in his dream, Yoh turned to his spirit. "Amidamaru, do you know how long we've been walking?" he asked quietly.

The samurai didn't turn to look at him as he responded, keeping alert for any possible danger. "I wouldn't know, but it feels like perhaps half an hour."

Yoh frowned. In that entire time, they had come across nothing to tell them that they were making any process in distance – no landmarks, no people, not anything. It was so quiet…

"Yoh-dono," Amidamaru suddenly hissed, morphing into his human form and unsheathing a katana, one elbow in front of Yoh to halt him. "I can sense others."

As if on cue, Yoh's ears just barely picked up the sound of footsteps, and he instinctively reached for the katana – _Harusame_, he remembered – and ducked into a ready position, eyes peeled for danger.

"…this is such a terrible place…"

"…we got here _somehow_… There must be a way out…"

Slowly, two figures came into view out of the fog, one incredibly tall and large, and one incredibly short and small. Wary, Yoh pulled out Harusame, the spiritual metal sliding almost silently as it came out of its sheath, and held it at the ready. Another flash of the dream flashed in his memory, and he almost gagged at the thought of killing, but he kept himself steeled.

However, when the shorter figure came into clear view, the small, dirty-blond haired boy's words caused him to falter.

"Yoh-kun!" the boy exclaimed, face and eyes bright in joy.

Yoh stared at the boy for a moment, lowering his weapon only slightly in confusion.

"Do I know you?"

()()()()()()()()

Its eyes sparked in interest, intrigued by the new arrivals. How they all got here, it didn't know, but that was hardly the matter. Their doubt was delicious to feed off of; it would be best to wait and sap out their emotions until it was time to devour their physical forms. There hadn't been a new arrival in such a long time, and never had _six _come at the same time – not to mention the six spirits that accompanied them!

It would have to act in caution. There was little chance that it would be noticed as an actual threat if it kept its distance, but if it ventured too far away from its soon-to-be kill, the others would swoop in and claim them as their own. Vigilance was a must.


	3. Two

**DISCLAIMER: I don't own Shaman King!**

_What other way to celebrate Ren's birthday than to introduce his view into the story? Mwaha 8D_

_So, now that you all see that they've lost certain memories, I'll say that I really wanted to see how the characters would react to each other in this situation. I feel that I kinda messed up with Ren a little, though, and made him a bit too violent. *pokes Ren only to get stabbed in the nose* O.O ouchies. *huggles Ren against his will* Istillloveyou~~_

_We actually get to see some action! Wooooot! Enjoy :D_

**Two**

Grasping his head in pain, the dark-skinned boy sat up and rubbed his temples. He had a bulbous nose and a puffy afro, but not much else could be said about his appearance. An apprehensive jaguar spirit crouched next to him.

The boy's few memories came in painful bursts. He heard gunshots, saw blood, the bodies of a man and woman… It was Christmas…

_My name is… Chocolove, _he thought to himself, attempting to make sense of things. _My dream… I want to make people…laugh…_

He blinked as if struggling to get used to light. How could he want to make people laugh when he'd seen such terrible things? Sighing in tiredness, he lifted his head to have the jaguar nuzzle him affectionately, causing a chuckle to escape from him – it sounded both familiar and alien to him at the same time, if that was possible.

"Hey, Mic," he greeted as he stood, looking around._ I need to get out of here, _he thought, pushing away the memories. _There must be some way…_

()()()()()()()()

Manta thought he must've heard wrong, and he chuckled nervously. "Uh, Yoh-kun? Don't you remember me? Manta? You know… your friend."

Yoh's mouth was agape with confusion, and he lowered his katana and took a small step back. "I… Should I remember you?" he asked, brows furrowed.

Manta blinked, shocked. However, before he could totally freak out or something, he reanalyzed the situation. He couldn't remember _why _Yoh was his friend, but he _knew _Yoh was his best friend. Mosuke couldn't remember much anything either; perhaps Yoh was the same?

Yoh stood up straight and scratched the back of his head. All of his earlier defensiveness had evaporated. "Sorry," he apologized, voice taut with bewilderment. "I can't remember much anything at all… neither can Amidamaru," he added, with a slight elbow jerk towards the spirit.

Manta nodded. "That's all right," he said, even though it didn't feel that way to him, even though he understood. He shrugged his shoulders, feeling a little bit sheepish. "We don't know much of anything, either."

"Yoh-dono…," Yoh's spirit breathed; Manta just barely caught the sound.

"Hm?" Blatantly, Yoh turned to the spirit accompanying him. "What is it, Amidamaru?"

Amidamaru sighed and gave up the quiet act, turning to Manta's spirit ally. "Who are you?" he demanded.

The sword smith jerked in surprise, then bristled. "Why d'you ask?"

Amidamaru narrowed his eyes and turned to Yoh. "I don't believe that spirit is trustworthy."

"_What?_" Mosuke bellowed. "What do you mean?"

Amidamaru gave him a 'you're kidding me' look. "For one, you won't tell me your name."

The sword smith narrowed his eyes. "Mosuke."

Amidamaru lifted an eyebrow and opened his mouth to speak, but Yoh beat him to it.

"I think it'll be all right to travel with them. I mean, we're all trying to find a way out, aren't we?" he pointed out, giving a lazy grin that Manta immediately recognized and smiled at. However, after a moment, the short boy's smile disappeared.

"Uh… Which way is out, do you think?" he asked.

Yoh looked around for a moment, an unreadable glint in his eyes, before grinning again at Manta. "I don't know. But it'll all work out."

()()()()()()()()

_It was fire, all fire. Nothing but suffocating smoke and fearsome fire. The scene struck into his heart, piercing deeper than anything, a blow so low so that it felt like nothing could ever compare._

_Separated from him by the flames were the bodies of his parents, their should-be-cold flesh burning in the heat. But, just as he watched, the fire consumed them and hid them from view._

_However, there was one other person in the room, whom the flames seemed to lick but not harm. Long brown hair fell around his shoulders and down his back, and when he looked back, his eyes were full of disgust._

With a strangled yelp, the boy sat bolt upright, panting. The boy was very feminine in appearance, and wore a plaid overcoat over his shoulders with navy pants and a button-up shirt. He had green hair that stuck out surprisingly attractively on either side of his head, and his eyes, wide with alarm, were green as well.

_My name is Lyserg, _was his first thought. His eyes caught sight of the mechanical device strapped to his arm, where a classic diamond-shaped crystal peeked out of it; hidden in its recesses was a long wire, he knew… _I am… a dowser. A… a Dithel…_

A sudden pain gripped his mind, and Lyserg clutched at his head, gritting his teeth with a hiss. The vision – no, the _memory_ of the flames, of the boy who murdered his parents… Of _Hao_…

A pink pixie-like spirit came closer to Lyserg, concerned, but at the moment, he could hardly care. Lyserg _knew _the face of Hao, he _knew _it. The face belonged to another… It belonged to… Yoh.

Without any precaution to his foggy surroundings, Lyserg stood and held out his arm.

"Morphine," he called tersely to his spirit. "Into the pendulum."

()()()()()()()()

The four, two human and two spirits (who kept glancing daggers at each other), walked in an awkward silence through the fog. At least, Yoh figured it was awkward in some part of his mind – most of his consciousness was hell-bent on trying to exorcise the dream/memory from his mind. He _hoped _it was just a dream, but it had felt so real… The eyes he had seen vulnerable, _unusually _vulnerable, if he could figure out what 'usually' meant in this place. The eyes of that person had seemed _more _than familiar, but he couldn't remember who they belonged to – nor did he truly want to know. If it _had _been a memory, then he must have killed that person…

"So…," Manta said suddenly, startling Yoh out of his thoughts. "Do you remember anything?" the short boy asked, looking a little out of place as he looked up at Yoh, who blinked.

_I can't tell him I think I killed someone… _"Only that if I don't get back in time to make dinner, my girlfriend will kill me. Or… I think it's my girlfriend." Yoh scratched the back of his head sheepishly.

Manta chuckled. "Good thing we're too young to be worrying about stupid stuff like marriage – if she was your fiancée or something, you'd be stuck with her forever!"

Yoh laughed for the first time since he'd come to this… odd place. It felt good to laugh. "Yeah, good thing." He looked at Manta. "What do you remember?"

Manta let out another little laugh. "Uh… Well, just you, and a bunch of stuff that really probably has no use here. And I woke up thinking that I had a test today."

Yoh chortled. "What a way to wake up."

Manta cracked a grin. "Yeah."

Yoh opened his mouth to speak, but a sixth sense in his mind clicked, and his eyes widened.

_"Hehehe…_"

Out of pure instinct, Yoh immediately unsheathed Harusame and oversouled Amidamaru, standing protectively in front of Manta. "Who's there?" he called, attempting to sift through the fog with his eyes.

The echoing laughter came again, and Yoh thought he caught a wisp of a inhuman, ghostly shadow dance through the mist. He tried to track it, but as soon as he saw it, it disappeared.

"Y-Yoh!" A strangled garble came from Manta, and Yoh whipped around to see that the boy's mouth and nose were submerged in a whip of water that wrapped around him in near entirety.

()()()()()()()()

Chocolove peered into the fog, once again unsure about his direction. It felt like he was going in circles, but for all he knew, the exit could have been right next to him and he wouldn't have known.

"What do you think, Mic?" he asked quietly. For the first time, he wondered _how _Mic had become his spirit ally – as well as the question of how he had become a shaman in the first place. He hated how he could only remember two things about himself, things that didn't really make sense when put together. But he had no way of knowing why things were this way, so why bother agonizing over it?

His spirit, being unable to speak in a human language, let out a murmur of dissent at the question, obviously as confused at Chocolove felt.

Chocolove sighed and began walking again, shivering at the damp air. Despite the weather, however, the back of his neck felt like it was on fire, like someone was watching him. He struggled against the urge, but he finally glanced over his shoulder.

He saw nothing at all.

Letting out a breath he hadn't known that he'd been holding in, he continued on. Nonetheless, a minute later, he stopped again, but this time for a slightly different reason.

Out of the fog appeared a figure, walking straight in his direction, a glowing... crystal of sorts pointing directly at Chocolove, attached to a device on the figure's arm by a wire, which was also glowing slightly. It took Chocolove a moment to realize that it was spiritual power… oversoul.

The new figure, a green-haired boy with similar colored eyes, stopped just five feet away from him, eyes narrowed.

"You're not him."

()()()()()()()()

_Why is everyone dead?_

_Dim light pervaded everywhere in the dank underground room. The stairs he had been following ended abruptly at a rancid-smelling pool, where shapes could just be made out under the surface…_

_Why are you killing everyone?_

_"…You must destroy... or be destroyed…"_

_He wanted to vomit at the smell, at the twisted feeling in his stomach. Dead… All those shapes under the surface of the water were dead people._

_Why are humans so dirty?_

_"…The one who wins is justice …and the one who loses is evil..."_

_No one can help it._

The boy didn't sit up, but his molten gold eyes snapped open, partially hidden by his deep navy bangs. His hair was shaped into a tongari, a large spike that went straight up at the back of his head that would look terrible on anyone else, but complimented his appearance. His muscles were lean but easily identifiable, and his pale skin was scattered with light scars that were only seen upon closer inspection. He wore dark pants, and a simple red vest over his torso.

The boy blinked, staring up into the fog. In his peripheral vision, he could just make out the figure of his spirit ally, Bason, but he made no sign that he had seen the spirit. It was just a tool, anyways.

_I need to get out of here_, he thought, though he couldn't think of a reason why he had to. He tightened his fists, and he realized that there was something long in his right hand. Slowly, he sat up and looked at it, immediately recognizing it.

Its main, middle section was that of a maroon staff. On one end, considered the back, was a small, deadly spike like one would find on a spear, and on the other end was a large, curved blade, cut into a design that was both flashy and fatal. At the base of this last part was where a tiny charm was tied.

It was a Kwan Dao, one of his weapons of choice.

He gripped the weapon and held it with one hand, pressing it against the same forearm. It felt perfect as he held it up to his face, admiring its deadliness. He let out a small grin (though it did appear to be mixed with a grimace), and he rose to his feet and stood up straight, staring determinedly out into the fog.

This place wasn't his home. He couldn't remember what his true home was, nor if he ever had one, but he was going to escape from this place. No, he wasn't going to escape – he was going to _annihilate _everyone who stood in his way, and _then_ leave.

_My name is Ren._

He grinned again, this time wickedly.


	4. Three

**DISCLAIMER: I don't own Shaman King, only this certain plotline :3**

_Here's the chappie where you find out who's got the English name, but this is all that I'll say on it: this is just a story._

_Tried to make Chocolove's jokes incredibly cheesy and stupid, which actually shouldn't be that hard for me. The banana he had in the prologue makes an appearance. :D_

_Things are going to happen incredibly fast at the end of this. Just go with it. Because this was all supposed to be done in a month, I really sped through it, and even though I MEANT this last part to be rushed, I don't like it too much. But oh well._

_For those of you who care, Muffled will, until further notice, only be updated on Fridays unless it's a special occasion. However, this, if all goes to plan, will be updated on Tuesdays and Fridays._

_Enjoy!_

**Three**

Lyserg stared at the boy, disappointed and rather annoyed. Though it almost felt like he could have been born that very day, what with the little memory he had, he knew he wasn't the greatest dowser ever. Far from it, he could tell for some reason he didn't know. But still, finding one person should have been easy enough. Just focus on the face, search for the aura, and let the pendulum point the way. It would have been sickeningly sweet to be able to find Yoh – or better yet, Hao – on the first try, but apparently, that hadn't happened.

The boy, black with an afro for a hairstyle and a jaguar for a spirit ally, looked at Lyserg strangely. "I'm not who?" he asked.

After a moment, Lyserg decided not to be completely hostile. After all, this was definitely not the person who had murdered his parents. He retracted his pendulum back to its home in the device on his wrist and lowered his arm. "The person I'm looking for," he answered, unintentionally looking off into the distance as if he could see that horrible face if he looked hard enough. "Actually… Two people. Someone named Yoh and someone named Hao. They both have brown hair, and they're twins." He looked at the boy in the eye. "Have you seen or heard of them?"

The boy blinked, and then shook his head. "No… At least, I don't think so. I…" He trailed off, a strange glint in his eye. The boy suddenly pulled out something instinctively from his pocket and shoved it in Lyserg's face, revealing it to be a button labeled with the word 'MEMBER.'

"I can't re-_member_!" the boy exclaimed with a cheesy grin. "Get it?"

Lyserg lifted an eyebrow and backed up a little bit. "Uh… Yeah," he said, deciding that it might be safer to agree. "Yeah, I get it."

The boy blinked again and stood up straight, scratching his head and looking at the button as if just realizing what he had done. "Huh," he grunted, pocketing the button again (how he had gotten it in the first place, Lyserg didn't want to know). Another odd look came over him, and he pulled a banana out of the same pocket. He studied it for a moment, as if wondering where it had come from, and then shrugged to himself and peeled the skin off. He almost took a bite before seeming to remember his manners and offered it to Lyserg, who shook his head quickly.

Mouth full, the boy suddenly said, "Oh," managing to spit out a bit of banana on accident. He swallowed. "My name's Chocolove," he introduced himself, and then pointed to the jaguar. "And that's Mic."

"Lyserg," Lyserg replied, struggling to adapt to the actions of this odd person. "This is Morphine," he added when the pink pixie spirit appeared just in front of him.

Chocolove finished his banana, and he examined the leftover skin for a moment. Several emotions that Lyserg hadn't noticed before ran across his face, one of the most prominent being confusion, among both excitement and something that was almost disgust.

Chocolove seemed to shake himself into seriousness and tossed the peel away, seemingly without another thought to it. "Is it just me, or can you not remember everything, either?"

Lyserg blinked. "No…," he admitted, furrowing his brows; he hadn't thought about not being able to remember everything, only about finding Yoh or Hao. "I can't."

Chocolove nodded understandingly. "How about we stick together till we find the exit?" he offered. "Strength in numbers and all." Another odd look came over him, as if he were struggling with the urge to do something, but all he said was, "I also…keep feeling like I'm being watched. I don't think it's safe here at all."

Lyserg thought about the offer for a moment before nodding. "That sounds good, but I'm not leaving till I find who I'm looking for, or if I'm sure they're not here."

"Okay," Chocolove agreed. A little reluctant, he added, "We can look for those two first, I guess." His eyes wandered to the device on Lyserg's wrist and glistened with interest. "What's that for?"

Suddenly feeling proud, Lyserg held up his arm and extended the wire a bit to let his pendulum dangle. "I'm a dowser."

()()()()()()()()()

"Manta!" Yoh yelled, trying the grasp the water with his free hand (the other was still holding Harusame). The water was incredibly cold to the touch, but nevertheless, Yoh tried to get a grip on it, though it was impossible; his hand kept closing into a fist without even managing to catch the water between his fingers.

What made the situation worse was the Manta struggled against the water, making all sorts of grunts of alarm and erratic thrashes that were muffled and slowed by the water. His wide, panicked eyes met Yoh's for an instant, and Yoh was, for just a second, jerked back to the memory of slaying that person…

With renewed vigor, Yoh slashed at the tendrils of what seemed to be living water that extended from the surrounding area and constricted Manta. The oversoul-powered Harusame cut easily through the water, but a moment afterwards, the water tendrils would just reconnect.

Yoh was beginning to panic. "Manta!" he yelled, continuing to slash at the now dozens of water streams that seemed to web out from Manta, although it was really the other way around: the mist itself seemed to be forming into the deadly tendrils. Yoh cried out again and again as he hacked away. Manta's grunts and struggles had subsided, and the boy was now beginning to turn blue…

"Manta!" Yoh dropped Harusame and began tearing with both hands at the water that was wrapped around Manta's body. When that didn't work, he reached in and grasped Manta's arms in attempt to pull him out, but as soon as his hands closed around Manta, the water suddenly began to travel up his arms, compressing around them before reaching his shoulders. The water split directions, traveling faster down his torso and legs and traveling slowly up his face.

Yoh struggled against it, trying to kick and writhe away, but it wouldn't let go. The water seemed as dense as glue, and the coldness was almost enough to drive the breath out of him. It covered his mouth, and in a last attempt, he breathed in with his nose and held his breath as he continued to fight against this force.

_"Hehe…_" There was a giggling sound, and just before the water covered Yoh's eyes, he saw a tall, hazy, dark blue, almost feminine figure standing out of his reach, tendrils of water extending from her handless arms towards him and Manta…

Slowly, Yoh's resistance began to cease, and black spot started to appear in his vision. He wanted to breathe, he wanted to breathe _badly_, so badly his lungs felt like they were about to explode. He couldn't breathe out, though… He couldn't…let the water in…

At the edge of Yoh's consciousness, he could hear the faintest, most muffled yell, and the water suddenly froze around him, somehow leaving just enough room to breathe in much needed air. A few moments later, he felt tremors in the ice, and with a _chink _as a part of the ice broke off, Yoh's face was free.

Yoh continued to gasp in air as his rescuer freed Manta's face from the ice as well. Yoh's adrenaline was pumping, but once he saw Manta sputter out water and take a few wheezing breaths, he sighed in relief.

"Are you two all right?"

Yoh blinked and looked at their rescuer. The boy was pale-skinned and wore a ski jacket with dark blue shorts, and had a headband tied around his head to keep his spiky blue hair up. His face was etched in concern.

"Yoh-dono!" Amidamaru was suddenly there, in between Yoh and the stranger. He was letting out near-comical tears of relief. "You're alive!"

Yoh coughed a little. "Of course I'm alive, Amidamaru." He looked past his spirit to the stranger and gave a smile. "I'm a bit cold, if you don't mind."

"Oh – right!" The boy quickly went to work at chipping away at the ice with the help of a snowboard and a tiny spirit, and before too long, Yoh and Manta was completely free and sitting on the ground, rubbing their arms to try and get warm again.

"D-did you save us?" Manta asked the boy, teeth chattering slightly.

The boy scratched the back of his head a little sheepishly and nodded. "That monster thing you were fighting… It was made of water, so I froze it. It also froze you guys too – sorry about that."

Yoh nodded, shivering slightly. "I thought we were done for. I'm Yoh," he went on, also introducing Manta and their two spirits. He offered the boy a smile. "And you are?"

The boy blinked and looked away with his eyes. "Well," he said, waving his hand toward his spirit. "This is Kororo, and I…" He paused for a second. "I don't remember who I am at all."

Manta stared. "You can't remember everything either?"

The boy's jaw dropped. "What? You mean – you mean you two don't remember too?"

Yoh shook his head. "We can remember some things, but not everything. But we're assuming that if we find a way out, we'll remember."

"Well, what are we waiting for?" the boy asked, making as if to stand. "We need to get the hell out of here!"

"Not while we're still freezing!" Manta objected loudly, rubbing his arms for emphasis. "Wait until we warm up, all right?"

The boy stared for a moment before he nodded with a slight smile. "All right there, shorty."

"Manta."

"Yeah, Manta," the boy amended with a wave of his hand.

The short blond looked at the blue-haired boy for a moment. "Those marks on your jacket… I'm sure I've seen them somewhere in a book before, but I can't remember where they're from or what they mean." He blinked, eyes focusing again. "We need to call you something until you remember your name."

The boy frowned, considering Manta's words. "Well, I wouldn't know what to call myself. I feel really lost," he admitted a little shyly.

"It's all right," Yoh assured him. "We all do. But it'll all work out." He looked at the boy for a moment, eyes glassy but narrowed. "How about… Blue?"

The boy blinked. "What?"

"Blue!" Yoh repeated. "As a temporary name."

The boy gave him a look. "No way am I naming myself a color."

"Pink then," Manta snorted, earning himself a glare.

"Ha ha, very funny," the boy said in an entirely non-amused voice.

"Well…" Manta's eyes caught the snowboard that the boy had slung on so that it hung vertically behind his back. "Trey!"

The two other boys and all three spirits looked and him, and he blushed. "Well," he explained, "The snowboard… looks like a tray…" Timidly, Manta looked to the blue-haired boy, who suddenly smiled.

"Sounds good!" the newly-named Trey exclaimed. Suddenly, an expression of recognition crossed his face, and he turned around. "Oh, back there, after I destroyed that… thing, I think I saw something on the ground…"

Before the boys could do anything, there was a sudden sound of footsteps, and a feminine figure suddenly exploded from the fog and stopped in front of them, hardly panting at all. Standing about five-foot-eight, she a fair-skinned girl with dark, cascading hair and vivid, lizard-green eyes. She wore white swaths of cloth that seemed to be neither shirt, pants, nor dress, but all three at the same time that somehow were all connected.

"Did you destroy Kasumi?" she asked in a rush.

Trey balked in surprise. "Uh… I did," he finally answered, his eyes darting between being perverted and being polite. "At least, if it was that water monster thing, then yeah."

The girl sighed in relief. "Thank goodness. I've been hunting her for two weeks now. _'Kasumi, the foe that blinds you_,'" she quoted from memory, gesturing at the fog around them. "I haven't been able to see a thing in forever._"_

"I'm sorry…," Manta began, staring at the stranger strangely. "But you are…?"

"Oh!" The girl bowed in apology. "I am sorry. My name is An, and according to my memories I am supposed to destroy the monsters of this world before I am able to return home," she explained, though to Yoh everything seemed to be happening far too fast.

"I haven't seen other humanoid beings since before my arrival here," An continued. She suddenly looked at them all seriously. "I'll explain more as we go on, but I'm afraid that the worlds have to shift now." Without another word, she walked away a few steps, watched the entire way by six pairs of bewildered eyes, and picked up a slip of parchment in the exact spot where Trey had destroyed Kasumi.

"'_Yuuna, the foe who strangles you,'" _An read aloud.

And then, the world changed.


	5. Four

**DISCLAIMER: I don't own Shaman King. Kinda wish I did, but I didn't. I'd have screwed it up anyway.**

_I apologize for this incredibly boring chapter, but we gotta explain some stuff SOMEWHERE. There'll be some action when I upload on Tuesday *grins in such an evil way that even Ren gets a little scared*_

_To answer a question that a reviewer had, no, this story does not include Hao. Another apology for all his fans. *avoids a thrown bottle* _

_Not much left to say. I was incredibly bonded to this story while I was writing it in November, but now it's just kinda... eh. But it'll get better the further it goes on, at least I think... *stops before she shoves her foot too far into her mouth*_

_Enjoy, next chapter there'll be better excitement. :D_

**Four**

Ren blinked, realizing that he was now standing, not in a world of fog, but in a thick, moist jungle. The ground below him was dark and earthy, perfect for absorbing sound, and was dotted with exotic plants. The trees arched above him in a dense top layer that just barely let in sunlight. There was no clear path at all with all the roots and vines scattered everywhere along the ground. However, Ren knew somehow that there was supposed to be _some _noise – howling monkeys or birds or something. But there was no sound – just an intense, still quiet…

Bason materialized beside him. "Bocchama…"

"Be quiet, Bason," Ren commanded in a low but fierce tone as he looked around at the new surroundings. He couldn't fathom how the world had changed like this, but he could adapt. This new world was dark and full of plants, perfect for a foe to hide in.

Ren's molten gold eyes flicked over every inch of what he could see, taking in every detail so that he could analyze the situation. The forest floor was littered with roots and vines, but other potential places to take cover, besides the mostly thin trunks of the trees, were far between. Ren knew he would be able to destroy anyone he came across, be he didn't want to be caught unawares – not that that would be likely. He needed to take a route that wouldn't leave him out in the open.

His eyes traveled upwards, and he smirked before expertly jumping into the air and nimbly landing on the limb of a tree. It swayed slightly under the sudden weight, but it wasn't going to break.

If anyone had been there to look, all they would have seen was a glint of gold and perhaps a slight budge of branches as Ren continued on.

()()()()()()()()

"What?" Manta jumped to his feet, looking every which way that was possible at the jungle. "How – what – _huh_?"

Trey jumped up as well, jaw dropping. He looked to the girl, An. "H-how did you do that?"

An blinked and looked at the three, her green eyes wide. "Oh, I'm sorry!" she apologized. "You see, to get out of here, you have to destroy the monsters here – I remember that from before I came here. The only way to go on to another monster is to enter their world by reading the tag left behind by the most recently killed monster."

Yoh furrowed his brows in confusion. "Okay… But how'd we get here in the first place?"

An looked at them with a blink. "I don't know how _you _three got here, but I can remember that I'm here to destroy the monsters, but I'm not sure why."

"Wait." Trey held up his hands. "I don't get it."

"Me neither," Manta added.

"Okay," An said. She turned to Trey. "You know that thing you just defeated? Kasumi? She was the monster I've been looking for. Now that she's dead, her world is gone, and now that I've read the tag that was left behind after she vanished, the world changed to Yuuna's, the monster we're looking for now."

Trey blinked. "Uh… Okay," he agreed reluctantly, completely confused. _I'll just go along with it for now_, he thought to himself. There was a bitter pang in his empty mind. _I'm doing that anyways, might as well keep at it_.

An gave an understanding smile. "You'll get the hang of it soon." She suddenly blinked a couple times in surprise. "Oh! I'm sorry – I didn't get your names."

"It's all right," Yoh replied, introducing himself and the other two boys and all three spirits.

At the sight of the spirits, An peered at them. "They're… tame demons?" she asked in confusion.

At this, Kororo cooed very angrily, and Mosuke crossed his arms in a huff.

"We're not demons," Amidamaru corrected, looking very tired for some reason. "We're spirits."

"They help us fight," Yoh explained. "We're shamans."

An blinked her green eyes curiously. "Shamans?"

Manta scratched the back of his head in embarrassment. "Well, I'm not really one – I know I don't have a lot of experience." He turned to An. "You said you were hunting the demons? How many have you defeated, and how do you do it if you're not a shaman?"

"Three," she replied. "Trey killed Kasumi, so there should be six left. And I fight with this." She held up her hand, and it glowed a soft green and shifted into a sharp spike that was attached to her arm as naturally as a wrist would be.

"Whoa!" Trey's eyes widened and he leaned in toward her arm as Yoh and Manta let out similar forms of awe. "That's so cool! How'd you do that?"

"I remember that my species was part shape shifter," An explained. "It really helps to fight those things."

Yoh blinked, seeming to bring himself back to the present. "What was the monster that we're supposed to be hunting? Yuuna, you said?"

An nodded and held up a slip of parchment. "_'Yuuna, the foe who strangles you.'_ Once we defeat her, we'll go to the next world and defeat the next monster until we defeat them all. Then we can leave."

"How do we know when we find Yuuna?" Trey asked, looking around at the trees. He hadn't noticed it before, but the thick tree layer blocked out a lot of light, and the shadows were actually pretty creepy now that he knew that he would have to keep a lookout for things that wanted to kill him.

"We'll know," An said simply. Her spike arm glowed and formed back into a fully functional hand once more. "But it's best not to stay in one place. They know when their territory's been invaded, and they'll either attack you right away, wait for an opportunity, or, as the second one I killed did, evade you for as long as it can. We're going to be here for a long time yet."

Yoh cocked his head. "How long have you been here?"

"In my time? About a month, I would guess."

Trey blinked. "A month?"

"Wait a sec!" Manta waved his hands for attention, then pointed at An. "You're not human, and I've never heard of a… a shape shifter thing. You must have a different language than us; how can we understand you?"

An shrugged. "How can I read this?" she asked, holding up the slip of parchment and showing it to Manta.

The words and letters were in a form that was indescribable and unlike anything Manta had ever seen – nothing like Japanese or Chinese, or English for that matter. But, as if he were a pro, the letters registered in his mind as, what else but, _Yuuna, the foe who strangles you._

Manta handed the parchment slip back to An, who pocketed it in the folds of her strange clothing and said, "Well, we should be getting a move on. Staying in one place for too long isn't good."

()()()()()()()

"Shit!" Chocolove swore as he tripped over a root. He was about to fall onto the ground when Lyserg's pendulum and wire wrapped around the black boy's middle and caught him as gently as a wire could. Muttering a thanks, Chocolove stood up fully, and Lyserg retracted the wire.

"Stupid forest," Chocolove grumbled, kicking the root. "How do you think it changed from fog to _this_?"

Lyserg shrugged, looking like he was beginning to lose his patience. "I don't know – I told you that already. Does it matter?"

"It might," Chocolove replied, peering at the tree. A phrase popped up in his mind, and before he could really think, he knocked on it. "Heh, this tree can't really trip me. It's all bark and no bite." He eyed Lyserg, but the dowser just stared at him blankly, reminding him that he had no _idea _why he wanted to joke around like this.

Lyserg sighed. "C'mon, let's get going." He focused his furyoku into his pendulum with Morphine once more, and the crystal, after a moment, swung to point in a direction, in which he started walking immediately.

Chocolove caught up with him. "Why do you want to find this… Hao and Yoh, anyway?" he asked.

"Hao burned my parents to death," Lyserg answered shortly. "Yoh is his twin."

Chocolove blinked, stunned. After a moment, he said, "I remember that my parents were killed on Christmas…"

Lyserg's eyes widened in surprise, and he turned to Chocolove. "Oh… Well, you understand why I want to find them, then?"

Chocolove's eyes darkened. "Yeah…," he replied carefully. "I understand."

Lyserg's eyes brightened almost dangerously. "Well, let's hurry, then!" he said, quickening his pace.

Although Chocolove didn't like Lyserg's implied desire for revenge, Chocolove didn't want to be left alone in this strange world, so he hurried after the dowser. However, before he got too far, he tripped again, cursing.

"Stupid vine," he muttered mutinously with a vehement glare at the said object before rushing after Lyserg.


	6. Five

**DISCLAIMER: I don't own Shaman King. **

_I promised you all some excitement, didn't I? *smirks* I think I'll leave you all hanging, though, at the end. Mwahahaha. _

**Five**

"I hate this," muttered the black boy as he and the green-haired boy traversed the root- and vine-infested jungle. "Why'd all that fog have to change into _this_?" he grumbled rhetorically, but the green-haired boy answered anyway.

"Because it knew you would complain my ears off," he growled tersely, obviously annoyed by the other boy.

Ren could understand that, but before he could wonder how, he pushed the thought aside and crept silently along the branch, observing them. He needed to strike them when they were least expectant, as well as when they were in a place that had enough space in case he needed to take evasive maneuvers. The navy-haired boy could very well have just dropped down and slaughtered the two then and there (and he was also very tempted to do just that – he knew he could), but he was affected by the absence of his memories, causing him to be a bit more cautious than he felt he would have been with them.

Keeping his balance low and his feet vertical on the branch, Ren peered through the leaves, gripping his Kwan Dao tightly. It felt so natural, but he knew that there was a weapon more powerful than this somewhere – a sword, he thought, but he had no idea where it could be. In any case, though, the Kwan Dao, when integrated with Bason and fed with furyoku, the spiritual power within him, would still get the job done.

_"Destroy or be destroyed… The one who wins is justice, and the one who loses is evil…" _A sick feeling suddenly welled up inside him, but he pushed away the feeling. He didn't know why that feeling kept coming up, but it did. Instead of dwelling on it, though, he continued to creep along the branches after the boys, keeping silent as he quickened his pace and came around in front of the lumbering fools.

"Bason," he whispered quietly. "Into the Kwan Dao."

Obediently, Ren's spirit ally integrated into the Kwan Dao, and with an allowance of furyoku, the weapon glowed a yellow that wasn't unlike Ren's eyes.

Immediately, the green-haired boy's oversoul twitched, and green eyes met gold for just a fraction of a second as Ren jumped out of the tree and rushed at him, Kwan Dao held in a ready position to stab. Ren crossed the distance between them over the knobby roots with ease, a wicked grin emerging on his face.

Before he knew what had happened, though, the boy's pendulum oversoul zipped in front of him and turned its deadly point toward his chest. By pure survival instinct, Ren jumped into the air over the crystal and wire and landed in a kneeling position before he continued his dash. In no time, he was within range of the green-haired boy, and he narrowed his eyes in triumph.

_"Golden Chuuka Zan—"_

Out of the blue, something wrapped around Ren's neck.

()()()()()()()()

Manta was panting as he struggled through the jungle after Yoh and the others. He let out a mumbled curse as his backpack caught on a plant, but he managed to pull himself free.

Mosuke appeared beside him. "Are you all right?" he asked.

"I'm fine," Manta replied tersely, promptly falling onto his face. Spitting dirt out of his mouth, he stood and continued to walk. "I'm fine."

He noticed Yoh looking back, and he felt a pang within him. Yoh's face was concerned, but his eyes were also confused, reminding Manta that Yoh had no recollection whatsoever about their friendship. Not to say that Manta really remembered _why _they had become friends, but he knew that they were. It was all so complicated on the inside, but on the outside, Manta knew that the problem was simple, and also had a simple solution. Well, not simple per se, but you could get the point easily enough.

"When do you think we'll find that monster?" he called after them.

An looked back and slowed, tossing her dark hair unintentionally over her shoulder. "You never know when. That's why you always have to keep a lookout."

Yoh looked around at the jungle. "Why aren't there any animals? Shouldn't this type of place be full of them?"

Trey blinked. "Why isn't there any food?"

An stopped fully and turned around to face them all. "You don't get hungry in this place," she explained, lizard-green eyes almost as dark as her voice. "You don't need food or water. You don't need sleep. There are no animals but us. For the monsters, however, _we _are the food."

"Even us?" Amidamaru asked, his eyes wide as he fully appeared behind Yoh.

An crossed her arms. "I think it would be safe to assume that, yes, they would try to eat you too."

Kororo and Trey simultaneously shuddered and let out little sounds of discomfort, and Mosuke seemed to shrink a little.

"Well…," Yoh said, seemingly trying to sound optimistic, "that just gives us all the more reason to find them as soon as possible, so that we can defeat them."

An nodded. "Yuuna could be anywhere. Keep your guard up."

The group continued on, each one looking cautiously into the trees and shadows beyond. No one spoke, and it was incredibly quiet, save for the occasional slight bump of shoe on wood or their breathing.

Manta cursed softly again as he tripped on a vine. He stood and tried to pull his foot free, but it was stuck in the twisted vine.

"Wait up a sec!" he called as he leaned down to untangle his foot.

()()()()()()()()()

Lyserg's pendulum dropped to the ground, useless now that there was no furyoku feeding into it, nor Morphine to give it the initial power. The wire was draped across the roots, plain and black, oblivious to the terror that was happening.

Lyserg clutched at his neck, pulling whatever was around it away to give him room to breathe. Vaguely, he heard Chocolove and the unknown boy struggling against whatever was attacking them as well, but he couldn't be bothered to give them any sympathy. Instead, he had to worry about this – this… _thing_ that was attempting towrap and constrict him.

Lyserg thought of his burned parents, and his blood boiled. _I… I can't let this… thing defeat me! I haven't found Hao or Yoh yet! I… I need revenge before I can die peacefully! _

Despite his struggles, the thing kept coiling around his neck, squeezing him. Lyserg's hands pulling at whatever it was kept him from being completely cut off from oxygen, but it was just a matter of time before his vision would start to go black, before his life started to end…

He heard the sound of a blade whizzing through the air and then he heard gasping breaths, but quite quickly after he heard what was surely the sound of the person choking again.

If Lyserg wasn't so panicked, he might have mentally sighed at the conclusion that he was about to die. He squinted his eyes, realizing that Morphine was attempting to pull the thing away from him, but, being a tiny pixie spirit, she couldn't truly manipulate physical objects without his help, and he certainly couldn't give any help at the moment.

_If I die…, _he thought weakly, focusing all his energy on pulling the _thing _away from him, _Then I'm going to see what's taking me out._

Finally able to pull the thing just far away from his neck so that he could see it, he realized that he was being choked by what had been tripping him and Chocolove since the jungle came into existence.

A vine.

()()()()()()()()

When Manta screamed, Yoh instantly whipped around to see that the short boy was being suspended in the air upside down by his foot.

"Manta!" he exclaimed just as An shouted, "Get out your weapons!"

Yoh, his mind in a haze of confusion, hesitated just a moment too long, and vines suddenly shot out from every direction, binding him. He yelled out, but a vine wrapped around his mouth and cut him off. He struggled against his bonds, but with every thrash, they just squeezed his body tighter. He wanted to whimper in pain, but he wasn't able to get any sound out past the plant.

There was a loud crashing noise, and the earth shook as multiple trees fell to the ground not too far from Yoh. Yoh had shut his eyes in an effort to endure the growing pain, but when he heard something that sounded an awful lot like many, many things slithering, he opened them, and they immediately widened in astonishment.

A creature as large tall as the trees left standing and almost as thick around loomed over them. It resembled a snake with dark slits that suggested eyes, and a gaping maw with razor sharp teeth. The end of its tail splintered out into many lines, and it took a moment for Yoh to realize that the monster was made up entirely of vines that never ceased to move across its own body or entwine with other vines as it reared and hissed at them.

This was the monster known as Yuuna, the foe who strangles you.

There was suddenly a rush of cold air, and the bonds that had constricted Yoh fell to the ground. Without taking the time to give Trey a thank you, Yoh inserted Amidamaru into Harusame and created oversoul, feeding a large amount of furyoku into it before he rushed at the monster and slashed at her. The vines he had struck split in half, but they immediately tied around each other and continued to slide along Yuuna's underside.

A vine whipped out from nowhere, and Yoh jumped backwards to avoid being hit or – worse – strangled by it. He saw An jump with legs that had been shape shifted into something that resembled the haunches of a cat and slash at Yuuna's eyes, but a vine shot out and knocked her to the ground. Trey rushed in front of her as if to defend her as a horde of the plants shot out. Quickly, Trey jumped into the air on his snowboard, which had been oversouled with Kororo, and shot out a blast of icy air which instantly froze a large section of the attacking vines. However, Yuuna's vines pruned themselves, and new ones began lashing about.

"_Help me_!"

Before Yoh was set upon again by the vines, he looked up to see Manta and Mosuke being tossed into Yuuna's mouth before the monster closed her jaw and made a swallowing noise.


	7. Six

**DISCLAIMER: I don't own Shaman King. Not at all.**

_So, here's the update. Don't know when the next update will be, I have midterms next week *shudders* Hopefully I won't fail. But you all can read :D_

**Six**

Manta yelled as the vine suddenly yanked on his foot and pulled him into the air upside down. The world flipped, the ground becoming the sky and the thick layer of trees becoming the ground. As he was jerked upward, Manta felt as if his stomach was going to fall out of his mouth.

"Manta!" he heard Yoh yell just as An screamed, "Get out you weapons!"

Manta wasn't entirely sure of what happened next because of the blood rushing to his head, but he saw what seemed like hundreds of vines come alive and rush about, and he both heard and saw trees crash to the ground as something giant and greenish and snakelike slithered into the area, with black slits for eyes and such a large, razor sharp mouth that it seemed like it could swallow them all whole.

"Manta!" Immediately, Mosuke was at his side, as if spiritually clinging to him in the ghost's orange blob-like spirit ball form.

"_Help me_!" Manta yelled as the vine whipped him through the air, suddenly letting go of him. He whirled through the air, unable to identify anything as the world spun around him. Somehow, though, he managed to land on something surprisingly soft. He had just enough time to identify to look around and recognize it as more vines before everything went dark.

_I'm inside Yuuna's mouth_, he realized with wide eyes just one second before he was swallowed. It was quite the odd, frightening situation (needless to say), and it was almost indescribable. He felt pressure on every side of him, and a liquid he didn't even want to _know _about suddenly drenched him as he was constricted and pushed downward. He screamed in terror, squeezing his eyes shut against the darkness.

"Manta!" Mosuke yelled, cutting him off. "Quick! You need to oversoul me!"

"Into _what_?" Manta asked, squirming. The pressure was everywhere aside from his face, which he kept tucked against his chest. "I can't move!"

"Dig your feet into the sides!" Mosuke commanded. "There shouldn't be much longer till we reach its stomach. Shouldn't there be something in your backpack? We need to hurry!"

"Yeah, '_we'_!" Manta scoffed, but nonetheless, he kicked out and dug the sides of his feet into opposite ends of the monster's esophagus, managing to slow his progress through Yuuna's digestion system, but not completely stop it. He felt the entire creature jerk at the sudden lodge in her throat, but he knew she wasn't going to try to cough him up or something. Instead, she swallowed harder, and Manta almost slipped, but he managed to catch himself with his hands on the sides of Yuuna's vine throat. It was hard to get traction on the vines because of the strange slime, but Manta dug his nails into the sides.

"Okay, Manta," Mosuke instructed quickly. "As soon as the pressure lets up, just before it swallows again, pull the first thing you get out of your backpack."

If Manta hadn't been panicked before, he certainly was now. "B-but I don't think I can do it!"

"Just _try_!" Mosuke roared, almost causing Manta to slip again. "We can't give up without trying!"

_Easy for you to say! _Manta wanted to scream. He wished this was all just a dream, a terrible nightmare that he'd jerk awake from and find himself safe in his bed. But it wasn't; it was real. It was horrible. It was worse than a nightmare.

Before Manta could think another doubtful thought, Yuuna gave another giant shudder, and the pressure around him let up in preparation for another swallow. Mosuke yelled, but Manta was already ahead of him. The boy reached up quickly and unzipped his backpack, pulling out the first thing that he felt. Even though he couldn't see, he immediately recognized what the object was in his hands.

"Mosuke!" he yelled, somehow finding his spirit in the dark. "Into the laptop!"

()()()()()()()()()

Trey jumped into the air on his snowboard, using his furyoku to cause icicles to burst up from the ground, stabbing into Yuuna. The monster gave a strangled hiss and jerked her neck (or, at least, Trey _thought _it was her neck), and then shot out more vines toward him. Instinctually, Trey zipped away on his oversoul powered snowboard, whizzing through the air as smoothly as if he was actually snowboarding down a wintery mountain.

An idea popped into Trey's mind, and he smirked as he doubled back, ducking under the oncoming vines. He turned his head around to see that they were still following him. He smiled and brought himself into a straight dive toward the ground, pulling himself up just in time and heading back in the direction he had just come from, circling around the vines so that the tips followed him in a tight spiral. He smirked once again as he hurried away, looking back to see that he had just tied the vines in a knot.

_That should take care of them, at least for a little while, _he thought as he rushed toward Yoh, who had been set upon by a mass of vines from all sides. As Trey neared, he positioned his snowboard into an attack form.

"Duck, Yoh!"

Yoh looked up for a heartbeat before he stooped down, covering his head with by shifting his oversoul to a shield form. Trey focused and let out a blizzard of cold air which caused the vines to freeze and prune themselves, giving Trey a moment to land beside Yoh and help him back up. A second later, An jumped in beside them with acrobatic ease, her legs still catlike but her arms now like blades.

"Yuuna must have a weak point somewhere," she assured them as the vines whipped around in preparation of attack. "The eyes are an obvious choice, so if one of us has the opportunity to attack her, take it."

The two boys grunted their assent, tense as they eyed the vines, never blinking. Trey prepared to jump at the slightest sign of attack, his muscles taut. However, even as he watched, the vines froze in place. Confused, he blinked, but as soon as his eyes were closed, he panicked and his eyes shot open, only to see that the vines still weren't attacking. In fact, a second later, with so many _plops _that it sounded like an instant of rainfall, the vines fell to the ground and became inanimate.

Before Trey could react to this new predicament, Yuuna let out a grating screech, and the trio spun around to see the monster writhing, her vines moving quickly against each other along her surface. She let out another, more mournful sound, the volume causing Trey to hold his ears in pain, and she thrashed about even more violently, sending more trees falling to the ground.

"Wait," Yoh said quickly, taking a step forward and pointing. "What's that? In the middle of her stomach?"

Trey flicked his eyes from Yuuna's face (which appeared to be twisted in pain) and turned his attention to her middle. It took him a moment to make it out, what with the monster's struggles, but the vines along that area erratically pulsed outward, as if someone was trying to break out from the inside…

"Manta!" Yoh yelled, rushing forward towards Yuuna's middle, oversoul raised. An made a movement after him but stopped herself, and Trey looked at her before hurrying after the other shaman, if only to make sure that the idiot didn't get himself squashed.

Just as Yoh came within ten feet of the squirming monster, a section of vines burst with a shower of greenish red paste, and Yuuna let out a shriek of absolute pain, straightening her vine body out like a rod as her voice rose in volume, causing Trey to hold his ears again. In a gush of more of the greenish red paste, the vines that made up Yuuna somehow lost their consistency to stay solid, and what was left of her body spread out at least fifteen feet in each direction.

Yuuna, the foe who strangles you, was now dead.

The only thing left standing was short and covered with the slimy paste, a hammer-shaped oversoul fading from his hand as he panted, his eyes wide as he stared at nothing in front of him.

"Manta!" Yoh yelled and rushed forward, but stopped short when Manta shakily put a slime-covered object back into his backpack. The short boy looked up, eyes slowly shifting from terrified to relieved, and he smiled.

"I thought I was going to be eaten for sure," he admitted after he fell back on his butt with a nervous laugh as Trey and Yoh walked up to him, congratulating him on his job well done.

"It looks like you _were_ eaten, though," Trey pointed out, noting Manta's slimy appearance. The small boy laughed.

"Yeah, I do, don't I?" he asked, scratching the back of his head.

"Yeah, you do," Mosuke agreed, appearing next to his shaman.

"Hm?" Yoh turned around. "An?" he called. "What are you doing?"

The girl in question had been wading through the slime, but when Yoh had spoken to her, she had caught sight of something and had bent down to pick it up. She mumbled something in disgust as she wiped the goo off of it, then spoke.

"'_Daichi, the foe who buries you.'_"

As it had done once before, the world changed.

()()()()()()()()

Just as Chocolove thought the world was about to fade away and he would be strangled to death, the vines that had been wrapped around his throat fell to the ground, freeing him. He also fell, onto his hands and knees, gasping for air, oh so precious air. He felt incredibly weak and his breaths rasped as he struggled to return to normal.

He blinked, and the ground below him changed from damp earth and root to rock and hard-packed dirt, but he wasn't aware of the change, at least not consciously. He heard footsteps, but before that could send him into a panic, they faded away.

"Ch… Chocolove?" he heard Lyserg gasp. "Are you… all right…?"

"Yeah…," the black boy managed back. "What… What happened to that guy…?"

()()()()()()()()()

Ren gasped as he ran uphill. Sometimes he had to climb on his hands and knees up the rocky slope due to the fact that his recent face off with death by strangulation had left him weak. He was ashamed that he had had to run away, but he couldn't have stayed there in that condition; it could have been suicide, and Ren was definitely not suicidal in the least.

Ren finally stumbled into a cave, not at all caring how the landscape had suddenly changed from that of a jungle to that of a mountain. He set his Kwan Dao against the wall so that he could ease himself into a sitting position against the wall as well.

_"The one who wins is justice… and the one who loses is evil…"_

He shoved the thought away as well as the twisted feeling in his stomach. He hadn't won that… encounter, but he hadn't lost, either. He wasn't evil… but he wasn't justice, either. He still had to destroy…


	8. Seven

**DISCLAIMER: I don't own Shaman King, Hiroyuki Takei does.**

_Both incredibly happy but also incredibly drained. Bad news first: midterms = headaches. Well, the studying gives me headaches. Tests are kinda all right. But, I'll spare you that sob story, and tell you why I'm happy: I finally found a bookstore that sells Shaman King manga (I know i can read it online, but I like holding my books - call me old-fashioned). Bad news, I could only buy one volume at the time, and it's an hour away from where I live -.- Least I know where to find it!_

_Filler chapter. Tried to make it as funny as possible, but here starts the... I don't know what to call it. The I-Didn't-Mean-To-Make-Ren-Boring Arc? *lesigh* He'll get FAR more spotlight time after a few chapters, don't worry._

**Seven**

Much to Manta's enjoyment, when the world changed – from Yuuna's world to Daichi's world – Yuuna's leftover slimy paste evaporated with the jungle, leaving him essentially clean but still feeling like he needed a shower. He felt exhausted, but not in a way that required sleep (for he recalled An saying that there was no need for sleeping, eating, or drinking here). It was more like he was just tired of this entire situation, which he had been immensely since he had first woken up in this forsaken place.

He mentally shook himself, deciding not to dwell on the situation and instead work toward a solution with the others. That was the logical thing to do, anyways. Manta blinked a couple times in the newfound light and looked around.

Daichi's world was a completely different one than Yuuna's. For one, there were no trees to obscure the wide, pale blue sky – which oddly didn't have a sun, or, at least, Manta didn't see one. Another thing was the pure _openness _of the place, especially compared to Yuuna's excessive amounts of trees. Daichi's world consisted of a rocky mountain that seemed to go on forever with dirt trails going every which way around the peaks that Manta saw, way in the distance. There were no trees or vegetation to be seen; the only places to hide would be behind a rock or mountain, or, perhaps, within a cave.

"Manta…," Yoh breathed. Manta was about to turn around when the shaman suddenly, but quietly, continued. "Don't look down, and don't make any sudden moves."

That clichéd phrase was the _worst _thing to tell someone who was skittish around heights, or who usually made sudden moves. Unfortunately, Manta was both.

Unable to resist the urge, Manta, still seated after he had managed to defeat Yuuna from the inside out, glanced to his right and looked down a precipice that was so steep that the only thing that could possibly make out the bottom was a very distant, very hazy mist that reminded him all too much of Kasumi's world for a second. However, one second later, Kasumi's watery suffocation technique was the least of his worries, his most major one being that _he was right on the edge of the cliff._

Manta became paralyzed with fear, but alas, his balance had become a little too top-heavy, and he would have fallen over the edge if it hadn't been for the pair of hands that caught him and pulled him a good five yards away from the edge before letting go of him.

Suddenly finding his breath again, Manta gasped, chest heaving. He glared up at Yoh. "Thanks for telling me _not to look down_!" he yelled, waving his arms.

"Shh!" An commanded, holding a hand out for silence, earning semi-confused looks from the trio. Keeping a lookout, she explained, "Daichi is supposed to bury you. If we speak too loud, there might be a rock fall, like an avalanche on a snowy mountain. We have to be careful."

The last words did not amuse Manta. "Aren't we always careful?" he deadpanned.

Yoh glanced at him then looked back to An. "We need to find a place to rest instead of continuing on. I know you said we don't need to sleep or anything, but we can't keep searching and searching for… Daichi," he recalled.

An gave him a contemplative look. "…All right," she said at last. She scratched her chin in thought. "We can't stay out in the open like this – we'll have to find a cave or something. We'll be at risk for a cave-in, but I don't think Daichi would find us if we were quiet enough."

"Sounds good," Trey said. He looked around, furrowing his brows. He finally pointed at a spot about half a mile down the path they were on that curved around the precipice. "We should go that way; it's a little steep, but it's in between those two slopes. We'll be at risk for a rockslide, but if we go that way, we shouldn't be seen from most angles."

An followed his finger, and then nodded slowly. "That's a good idea. We should be able to at least find an alcove for shelter, if not a real cave." She turned to face Manta. "Are you ready to go?" she asked, just a slight hint of impatience in her voice.

Manta gave a grunt of assent and stood, swaying slightly but immediately. He managed to catch himself, though, and he shook his head as if to rid himself of the sudden dizziness.

_I must've used up too much furyoku, _he realized as sort of an afterthought as they started walking, An keeping such attention to their surroundings that it irked him. He knew, however, that such caution was essential here, so he said nothing.

()()()()()()()()

Once Chocolove and Lyserg had recovered enough and had surveyed their surroundings, Lyserg had dowsed for Yoh and Hao again (Chocolove keeping a lookout for that crazed boy who had attacked them). To both of their silently shared relief, Lyserg's crystal pendulum pointed in the direction that they were pretty sure that their attacker hadn't gone in, and they gratefully headed down the mountainside (once they were down it, they would have to turn a hard left, but they agreed that it was safer to head straight down rather than try to go diagonal or parallel along the craggy level they were on).

"That wasn't Hao or Yoh, was it?" Chocolove asked. He got the distinct feeling that that spike-haired kid wasn't either of them, but he felt like he should make sure before he could make assumptions.

"No," Lyserg answered. "It wasn't. I can't remember seeing him before, but that doesn't tell us a lot, does it?" he asked rather bitterly.

"It doesn't," Chocolove agreed. He shoved his hands into his pockets as he navigated the rocky slope. "I wonder what his problem is."

"To be honest," Lyserg said, "I'm more concerned about how those _vines _attacked us. And this is the second time that everything… changed. I want to know why that's happening, but first I need to find Hao – or Yoh."

Chocolove nodded even though Lyserg was keeping his eyes straight ahead of him after his pendulum. "We'll have to be careful." Realizing something, Chocolove jerked and looked at Lyserg. "Hey, why aren't I hungry? We haven't had any food in… well, I don't know how long it's been for you, but I remember having that banana, and that was a long time ago. You'd think almost being strangled would make you hungry."

Lyserg blinked and furrowed his brows as he continued to follow his pendulum. "I don't know… I'm not thirsty or tired either." He shrugged. "I didn't notice," he said dismissively.

Chocolove knew that Lyserg was, well, preoccupied with finding the murderer of his parents (and Chocolove could sort of understand that, what with his memory of his parents being killed on Christmas – though he couldn't really remember what that holiday was about). However, Chocolove couldn't understand how Lyserg could not notice that he wasn't hungry… Well, Chocolove hadn't really noticed, either – he'd been thinking very randomly about how he hadn't tried to use that banana peel in a joke. In retrospect, that thought really ticked him off due to the fact that he couldn't remember _why _he wanted to make people laugh.

"This is all so screwed up," he muttered.

Apparently, Lyserg heard him, because he suddenly snapped, "We'll figure everything out once I take care of Hao and Yoh. Until then, we'll just have to deal, okay?"

Chocolove blinked and looked sideways at Lyserg. "Okay," he replied, becoming rather unsure of the dowser.

()()()()()()()

Spiritual energy slightly drained, Ren wanted to sleep, even though he didn't truly feel tired. After directing Bason to keep watch (as if Ren needed it – his senses were sharper than a hawk, whatever that was), Ren lay down on the hard stone of the cave and closed his eyes.

A few minutes later, he opened them again. He hadn't felt like he was going to go to sleep in the slightest. It was annoying. He closed his eyes again in another attempt, but in less than a minute, his flaxen eyes gleamed in the semi-darkness of the cave as he sat up.

Now that Ren realized that he wasn't tired, he also noticed that he wasn't hungry, nor was he thirsty either. It was odd, not just annoying. He could remember vaguely about being hungry and thirsty and needing sleep, but right now there was nothing about himself that even hinted to any of those three things.

Deciding that maybe the third time was the charm (three… he liked that number), Ren leaned his head against the wall of the cave and closed his eyes again. However, no sleep came, not even that sort of lulling sense that came before it. Almost needless to say, it was really starting to tick Ren off.

With a sort of low growl that came out for no reason (Bason was the only one to hear him, and Bason only existed to serve him, not to judge him – not that the spirit would ever dare), Ren stood and picked up his Kwan Dao, twirling it around expertly even in such a confined space. He wanted to be out, but something was keeping him back. Some aggravating sort of sense that maybe he shouldn't leave the cave for now.

A second later, his intuition paid off when he suddenly heard and felt a loud rumble somewhere above his head. The shaking caused a bit of dust to fall out of the ceiling, but Ren knew he wasn't in immediate danger.

"B-Bocchama!" Bason hurried back to his side from the mouth of the cave.

Ren shushed his spirit. "Be quiet. It'll pass; it's just a rockslide. It's not going to cave in on us."

Bason looked as if he wanted to say something, but he held his tongue.

Ren crossed his arms and stayed silent as the rockslide passed overheard above the yards of solid rock. The sound became especially loud, which did unnerve him, but he didn't let it show on his features as he looked out the mouth of the cave. It was a good thing he had such good intuition – he would have been caught in this if he had tried to leave earlier.

The light that filtered into the cave flickered as the rock and debris rushed over it, and Ren thought that he saw a bit of the roof at the edge chip off. Slowly, the rumbling began to cease, and Ren's eyes widened in the unexpected darkness.

He hadn't been crushed in a cave-in. He'd been blocked in.

He clenched a shaking fist in the darkness. "When I find the bastard who's responsible for this…"


	9. Eight

**DISCLAIMER: I don't own Shaman King. I'd have screwed it up.**

_Sorry, I would have uploaded this on Friday, but a) I forgot, and b) when I remembered, I felt too lazy to get back on the computer. I'm incredibly happy that midterms are over *claps in excitement* so I should have more time to write. I already have a Valentine's onshot in the works (to those of you who care to know beforehand XD); romance seems incredibly far away from this story o.O although the Valentine's one has blood in it as well. Weird, I think something's wrong with me._

_Anyways, the monster Daichi is introduced. Just for you to get a sense for what its basic structure looks like, look up Regigigas from Pokemon._

_Enjoy!_

**Eight**

"Shit," Trey swore as he accidentally slipped, sending a few stones from the path loose. They clattered down the slope that they had just finished climbing, causing more stones to loosen as well… until there was almost a full-blown rockslide heading down the mountain.

At this, Manta, Yoh, and An gave Trey some very '_good going_' looks, to which he flushed at. "What?" he asked. "It's not like anyone was down there. We're the only ones here!"

An smacked him upside the head. "Idiot," she hissed, keeping her voice low in comparison to Trey's louder words. "Daichi's somewhere here too. You probably just gave away our position! Do you _want _him to come and get us?"

"I don't understand," Trey retorted harshly. "Don't we _want _to battle that… whatever it is? I don't know about you guys, but I _want _to go h…" He trailed off, face falling to one of absolute uncertainty as he looked towards the ground.

This entire thing was… almost indescribably… suck-ish. Trey couldn't find any other way to put it. Maybe Manta could word it better, but Trey knew for sure that he couldn't. In retrospect, this revelation put him even more in a depressed fog; he knew absolutely _nothing _about himself, except for the fact that he was a shaman who apparently controlled snow and ice, but he _knew _that this entire situation was just… terrible. He wanted, more than anything, to know who he was – what his real name was, who his family was – where the heck the strange markings on his headband and jacket and snowboard were from. He wanted to know how he met Kororo, if maybe there was a girl waiting for him wherever home was, if he had a home at all.

"Don't worry, Trey," Yoh said, breaking him out of his thoughts. He looked up and met Yoh's ebony eyes as the boy continued, "We'll get home. It'll all work out."

Trey blinked, but before he could let the words truly sink in, An interrupted them.

"This is all fine and stuff," she huffed, placing her hands on her hips – for the first time, Trey realized that she had shape shifted them into wide, almost paw-like appendages to cope with the rocky climb. Even though he had to admit it was rather cool, he was also a little freaky. "But I think we should get going," she finished.

"I agree," Manta piped up, panting a little (well, a _lot_) as he finally hopped up to the top of the slope. "We need a place to rest. Hey, Mosuke?" he asked.

His spirit ally appeared beside him. "Yeah?"

"Think you can go ahead a little and scout for a cave or something?" Manta asked. "Just don't go too far or anything."

"All right," Mosuke replied, looking a little unnerved to be leaving his short master, but nonetheless, he shrunk down to his orangey blob-like spirit ball form and zipped away down the path and around a corner.

Yoh stood up fully and stretched. "We should follow him more slowly," he suggested. "No sense in rushing; don't wanna bump into Daichi now, do we?"

Trey couldn't help but crack a grin. "No, I don't think we do. Unless one of us is feeling especially suicidal today?"

Yoh frowned mockingly in thought for a moment. "Nah, not today."

An cleared her throat, catching the boys' attentions while tapping her foot on the ground. "Are we going to go, or should I just leave you all here?"

Trey chuckled. "What, you expect us to let you have all the fun? Let's go."

With that, the group set off down the path, keeping close to the wall of the mountain to avoid the steep drop on the other side. Trey pushed his worries aside. It shouldn't really matter right now if he remembered or not – what mattered here was staying alive.

()()()()()()()

"Seriously…," Ren growled as he tossed another rock to the back of the cave. He was pretty sure that the rough stone was cutting his hands open and causing him to bleed a bit, but he had only made a small oversoul over his Kwan Dao to provide a soft golden light in order to save energy. Plus, he needed to use both hands to sift through the debris, so he was feeding the small amount of furyoku through where his ankle touched the shaft of his weapon. "When I find whoever did this, they're going to _wish _I killed them quickly…"

He knew that he could very well be being unreasonable, but he had this funny but annoying feeling that this was _someone's _fault, some bastard who didn't know up from down and needed to be eliminated from the gene pool anyways.

Ren let out a sudden, almost painful hiss as he cut his finger on a sharp rock, sticking his finger in his mouth in an attempt to ease the idiotic pain that he could've very well ignored but for some reason he decided to attend to. This entire place was ridiculous. First, nothing but fog, then a jungle where the _vines _attacked you, and now this. Not to mention his semi-failed attempted to kill those two boys.

Ren sighed and rested his forehead on one hand. _I need to get out of here._ He was getting the feeling that he _needed _to know where exactly he had gotten the two mantras that were almost always in his head. He _needed _to remember, he _needed _to know why this sick feeling kept bubbling up in his stomach. Was he ill, perhaps? _It would figure_, he thought bitterly, not quite knowing why. Had he always been this cynical? Probably, especially considering the mantras.

He shook his head forcefully. What was he thinking about? It felt as if he was considering himself evil (he hadn't lost, he couldn't have been evil). He needed to destroy, to win; he needed to become justice. That was what he'd been taught…

…hadn't he?

()()()()()()

When they heard the rumbling, Lyserg and Chocolove stopped, looking around in confusion; both of their first thoughts were was that that odd boy was attacking again, or perhaps there was another thing like those vines that was going to attack them.

"There," Chocolove said, pointing. Lyserg followed the black boy's finger diagonally up the mountain they had just come down from. A rockslide was hurtling just about full-force down the mountain towards a vast oval cliff, but luckily the two were too far away for the disaster to affect them. They watched as it slowed to an eventual stop, most of the stones that had been released from their normal positions tumbling over the edge of the precipice.

"What do you think caused _that _to happen?" Chocolove asked in astonishment.

Lyserg lowered his hand slightly, which he had been holding up in attempt to get a better reading for his dowsing. "I don't know. An animal, maybe? Or…" His green eyes narrowed, and he focused even more of his furyoku into his pendulum. In response, the crystal tugged at the wire, pointing approximately towards where the rockslide had originated.

"It's one of them," he said, unintentionally rasping as he began to run. He didn't care if Chocolove followed him or not – either Hao or Yoh was there, he couldn't tell which, as he had essentially been focusing on the same face when he had been dowsing. But in any case, either one was a good thing; it would get him one step closer to completing his revenge against the boy who had burned his parents to death. It didn't matter which one it was – he would kill them both.

"Wait!" Chocolove called. "_Lyserg_!"

Lyserg ignored him. He couldn't let anyone stop him now, now that he was so close he could _see _the blood of his enemies spilling out onto the ground as his pendulum ripped through them, as his wire choked them, as he spat on their shared face…

"_LYSERG_!"

The ground shook tremendously, shocking Lyserg enough to jump back, which was a good thing, since a second later, an impossibly giant, stony hand slapped the dirt where Lyserg had been just about to step. Panicked, Lyserg backed up quickly, his green eyes wide and fearful at what was appearing before him.

The skin of the giant – _giant _wasn't even the right word, it was so _huge, _so unfeasibly _huge_ – was pockmarked and ugly, mixing with thousands of shades of grey and red and brown, so entirely like living rock that it probably was. Another hand slapped the ground _yards _away from Lyserg, but it seemed like it had appeared right next to him. Much too slowly, but also much too quickly, the giant pulled itself up, and Lyserg saw its torso.

It had no neck to speak of at all. It had massive, round shoulders that were connected to both the face and chest without any identifiable marks except for what Lyserg fearfully assumed was the middle of the giant's head: a muddled grey-brown, glassy eye that must've been at _least _thirty feet in diameter, if not more.

Unconsciously, Lyserg backed up even further as the monster pulled itself up completely out of the pit, its square, toeless feet now level with Lyserg's own. With a startled, unintentional squeak, the green-haired boy tripped and fell flat onto his butt, hardly feeling the impact as he stared up at the frightening figure.

The monster's eye swiveled slowly around unblinkingly. Unlike a human's eye, which could flicker from one direction to the next in a second, the giant's didn't seem able to move fast enough to follow someone running around it (which, considering its size, would have taken about three minutes or so, even for a fast runner). Even though Lyserg was scared out of his mind, nothing could truly prepare him for the revulsion he felt when the eye moved to its right, and _continued _to move directly to its right, so that finally, only the sticky-looking white of the eye was visible for almost half a minute until the muddy grey-brown finally came back and rested on the dowser.


	10. Nine

**DISCLAIMER: I don't own Shaman King.**

_And we're continuing with the Ren-is-doing-nothing arc. Poor Ren, I'm sorry I'm torturing you by keeping you locked up in a blocked-in cave... You'll forgive me though, I'm sure._

_Not much I really think needs to be said. Enjoy, and if you have any questions or observations, don't be afraid to say so. (aka, REVIEW, DARNIT! XD Nah you don't have to if you don't want to, God knows I rarely review.)_

**Nine**

Suddenly, the earth shook again, even more than before. Startled, Ren grabbed his Kwan Dao and scurried back away from the rock fall in case the tremors caused the rocks blocking the exit to tumble in and bury him. Quickly, the shaking stopped, but less than ten seconds after, it started up again, but stopped just like before.

_What the hell…? _The same shudders wracked the earth two more times, and Ren stiffened, not knowing what was going on. He could just blast his way out with an attack, but he didn't know what was out there, nor what his attack could case to the area around him – he could end up burying _himself._

Incredibly frustrated, Ren crossed him arms, keeping a firm hold on his Kwan Dao. He'd have to wait this… earthquake out, whatever was causing it, before he could try to dig himself out again.

A sudden thought occurred to him. He extinguished his oversoul, and darkness instantly encompassed him. Even with the absence of light, Ren closed his eyes and focused on his immediate surroundings. The warm air was still and already somewhat moist with his own breath, and he couldn't feel any streams of fresh air coming in at all.

It appeared that he didn't need food, water, or sleep, but what if he ran out of air? After all, he'd almost been chocked by _vines _– suffocation wasn't far-fetched.

Ren rubbed his temples. The ground was still shaking at now random intervals, and it would be a stupid idea to blast his way out. He could try to dig himself, but that could very well take just too long.

_I can't believe I'm in this stupid situation_, he thought cynically, deciding that it was better to die trying than die not trying at all, and he set to work on slowly clearing the blockage of stones.

()()()()()()()

The group had just settled down to relax in a sheltered alcove when the ground shook. It lasted for only a second or two, but Manta shrieked in fright and An jumped to her feet.

"That's got to be Daichi," she said as the ground shook again, a hand against the wall of the mountain in order to steady herself.

"It… It sounds big," Manta stammered, shuddering even more than the ground. He remembered the constricting feeling of being swallowed, and he gulped.

Yoh stood, eyes narrowed as he peered out at the surrounding area outside the alcove, one hand on the handle of his katana. "…I don't see anything moving out there."

"Could it be on the other side of the mountain?" Trey asked, pulling his snowboard off of his back. "We did go around a corner."

"Wha…" Manta stood. "You can't mean that we're… we're going to go _towards _the place where this… earthquake is coming from?"

Yoh sent him a sympathetic glance, though Manta knew it was without the memory of their shared friendship back before all of this. "You don't have to get too close if you don't want to. You've done more than enough – you saved us all from Yuuna."

Manta frowned, even though the compliment would have made him blush in embarrassment. "Yeah, but I can't just leave you guys to fight… whatever it is by yourselves."

"We don't have time to stand around and talk," An growled out, walking out onto the main path. "The sooner we defeat Daichi, the sooner we can get out of here."

Manta blinked. When they had first met up with An, he had considered her somewhat scatterbrained and apologetic, but in reality, she was pretty bossy and determined. He frowned – the attitude somewhat reminded him of someone, but he was nowhere close to remembering. He pushed the thought away though, along with most… well, okay, _some _of his fear and walked out after Yoh and Trey. Daichi was waiting for them, and eventually, so was their own home.

()()()()()()()

Lyserg's two green eyes stared into the giant's brownish-grey one for a full minute. In that time, Lyserg wasn't aware of anything else, not even if he was breathing. Terror kept his limbs locked and his blood cold – which was so odd, because just a moment ago, it had been boiling with the thought of revenge.

In literal slow motion, the giant's arm lifted back in what was unmistakably the beginning of a punch, but Lyserg didn't move. The monster gave out a sort of animal groan even though it didn't have any sort of recognizable opening for a mouth. Still, Lyserg stayed on the ground, paralyzed with fear.

Morphine flew up in front of his face, her dark pink eyes wide with fear, and she made a pleading noise and tugged on Lyserg's collar. His breath caught in his throat, and he gave a jerk in an attempt to rid himself of his immobility, but it didn't work.

With surprising speed, the giant launched its attack, its immeasurable fist rocketing toward the dowser.

"Lyserg!" he heard Chocolove shout from somewhere. "_Move_!"

Finally startled out of his daze, Lyserg rushed to a sort of crouching position and sprang away to the right, just barely managing to dodge attack that made impact with the ground where he had just been, causing boulders to go flying and for what felt like the entire world to shake in pain. Lyserg landed on his hands and knees, instantly drawing blood on the stony ground, but he scrambled to his feet at a run and rushed away from the monster as fast as he could, adrenaline fueling his muscles.

He heard and felt the rumbles of the earth as the giant moved its feet to follow him. Through his panicked state, Lyserg's face fell – he knew that there was no sense in trying to run away. The monster would just find him again eventually and try to kill him again, even if he _could _outrun it.

"Morphine!" he called to his spirit ally, oversouling her into his pendulum so that the dowsing device would be powered into a weapon. Turning around, he let the crystal fly from his wire's pulley and sent it flying at the giant. The crystal glinted in the light and punctured the giant's skin and then ground to a complete halt as most of the pendulum stuck out like a beacon.

With a groan that emanated through the air, the giant somewhat slowly swung its arm in a circle and grasped at Lyserg's wire and whipped the boy into the air. Screaming, Lyserg arced through the air and began to plummet towards the rocky ground of the mountain. Fear gripped every particle of the dowser's body and soul – he was going to die here, he knew, from the impact.

As he neared the ground, he squeezed his eyes shut. _I'm sorry Mother… Father…_

_I failed._

()()()()()()()

"Whoa! Look at the size of it!" Trey pointed at the giant, presumably Daichi, as the monster pursued something.

"T-that's… huge…," Manta stammered, obviously considering in his mind the height difference between he and Daichi.

"Daichi…," An breathed. She held up her arms and shape shifted them into what looked like three-pronged attachments, almost like a trident. She took a breath as if to steel herself, and then began rushing down the mountain.

Trey scratched the back of his head, unsure of the girl's behavior (but who was _he _to judge…), and then turned his gaze back on Daichi. "Well, if we want to kill it, well, we'd better kill it."

Yoh chuckled, though Trey was pretty sure the brown-haired boy was just as scared as he was. "All right." Yoh pulled out his katana and oversouled his spirit, Amidamaru, into it. "Let's get going, then." Albeit at a much slower pace than An had gone at, Yoh hurried down the side of the mountain.

Trey looked back at Manta. "You can stay up here, if you want. It was enough to defeat that snake thing – and I don't think any of us wants you getting squished."

The last comment made Manta do a sort of comical sweat drop, and Trey gave him a grin before he took to the air on his oversoul powered snowboard and zipped straight toward Daichi.

As Trey neared the one-eyed giant, he saw Daichi move his arm and pull something that looked like a string and cause whatever was on the end of it to fly into the air. Trey squinted and saw that whatever it was appeared to be rather greenish. And it was… screaming.

Trey's eyes widened and he fed more furyoku into his oversoul to speed up. It was a _person _that was on a one-way ticket towards the ground. Closing the gap between him and the plummeting person in a matter of seconds, Trey ducked his snowboard down slightly, almost missing the mark to catch the… girl?

Trey caught whoever it was bridal style and stopped. The person was _very _feminine at first glance, with green hair and a somewhat pale complexion; she/he/it wore a plaid sort of poncho overcoat and brownish pants, and their face was scrunched up, eyes closed as if expecting to land onto the ground.

They opened their eyes, revealing the color to be a slightly brighter green than their hair, and the person jumped when they saw who was holding them. "Who – who are you?"

"Ah!" Trey exclaimed, identifying the person's gender by their voice. "So you _are _a dude."

The boy didn't seem to know whether to narrow his eyes in confusion or widen them in astonishment. "O-of course I am!"

Trey laughed. "Dude, you are in some serious need of some help – you look like _such _a girl."

The boy's face reddened. "Whatever!" he cried, struggling to get out of Trey's grip.

"Hey!" Trey yelled, gripping the boy tighter so that he wouldn't fall off and take a nose-dive to the ground again. "Hold on; we're still above the ground, you idiot."

As Trey lowered them to the ground, the boy pressed a button on a device on his wrist, and a wire went shooting back into it, a pendulum sticking out when it was all reeled in. Daichi didn't notice the two as they descended; instead, the monster was occupied with Yoh, An, and… someone who wasn't Manta.


	11. Ten

**DISCLAIMER: Shaman King is not mine. I do own An, the monsters, and this particular plotline though.**

_There was confusion on who the guy was at the end of the last chapter, it was Chocolove, but Trey/Horo doesn't remember him. Each section of the story is told from the view of a different character, so while you as the reader may know that "the boy with dark, spiky hair and golden eyes" is Ren since he's already been introduced to ANOTHER person, the person seeing him doesn't know who he is because he's never met him. Not to insult anyone's intellegence, just pointing it out._

_Before you even point it out, I know the fight scene could've gone a lot shorter, but I needed my chapter to be longer XD_

_Warning: chapter contains a pissed-off Lyserg._

_Enjoy!_

**Ten**

_The idiot!_ Chocolove thought as Lyserg turned and faced the monster. Chocolove _knew _he had never seen anything so big before (though… maybe there had been something he had seen… it was on the tip of his tongue, but he knew he would never get it), and if he were in Lyserg's shoes, he would have just kept running. More than anything to Chocolove, the creature's eye was the most terrifying – it was just so big and muddled-looking and… just plain old _creepy_.

Despite his misgivings, Chocolove also knew that he couldn't just leave Lyserg be – he had to help, even if, dare he think, he got himself killed in the process. Instinctively finding Mic and focusing his furyoku energy, Chocolove oversouled his spirit around himself and into his shaft claws. Immediately, through Mic's and his integrated oversoul, his senses became heightened, and he rushed forward at catlike speed just as the monster yanked Lyserg into the air by the dowser's wire.

Growling, Chocolove rushed after Lyserg, but when he saw someone with spiky blue hair on a snowboard catch the green-haired boy, he decided to turn and head toward the monster, seeing that two others had also come and were attacking it as well. Chocolove darted forward and slashed at the monster with his oversoul, but was surprised when only jagged chips came off.

The monster's foot came forward, and he dodged to the side, nearly bumping into a boy with brown hair who wore a set of orange headphones, and had a bluish oversoul that was flaming around a katana.

"Be careful," the boy cautioned with a glance at him before turning back to the giant. "I don't think Daichi wants to cooperate."

Chocolove blinked in confusion. "Daichi?"

The boy shrugged as the monster began to slowly turn around. "That's its name, apparently. Er… _his _name?"

The monster – Daichi? – gave another odd sort of groan and was suddenly rushing a punch at them. Automatically, Chocolove jumped back, as did the other boy in the opposite direction. Before Daichi could pull its – _his? _Chocolove thought confusedly – hand back, the black shaman slashed at it. Chocolove was pretty sure that he had managed to draw some sort of oil-like blood, but Daichi's arm suddenly swatted him out of the way, causing him to crash into the rocks behind him.

Chocolove lay on the incredibly uncomfortable rocks for a moment on his stomach, winded. He was sure he was bleeding somewhere – damned mountain. After he regained his breath, he scrambled to his hands and knees, glaring up at Daichi as the others fought with the monster. Stupid thing… He could barely even scratch it-!

"_That's it_!" he exclaimed, his still somewhat short breath cracking his voice so that it came out like a squeak.

()()()()()()()()

When the boy – who revealed his name to be Trey (well, he'd been a little vague about the name part) – was finally able to drop Lyserg safely onto the ground, the dowser readied his pendulum again in preparation to attack.

"_That's it_!" sounded a high-pitched squeak not too far from Lyserg.

Startled, Lyserg turned around and saw a slightly bleeding but triumphant looking Chocolove – who looked rather different with his oversoul covering his body – on his knees, one fist raised into the air. Promptly, the black boy coughed.

"What are you talking about?" Lyserg asked, the question coming out a little more harshly than he had meant for it to.

"How to defeat Daichi!" Chocolove exclaimed, rising to his feet. "The monster!" he elaborated when he noticed Lyserg's look of confusion. "Look," he continued, pointing towards… Daichi, he had said. "I can barely make a _dent_ in the thing, but its gotta have a weak point somewhere, right?"

Lyserg blinked. "Where?"

Chocolove brought his finger exaggeratedly up to his eye. "Here!" he said. "It's eyeball!"

With a new respect for the boy (for Chocolove had actually made _sense_), Lyserg turned back towards Daichi and let his pendulum fly as he ran after it. However, instead of aiming straight for the monster's eye, his pendulum's wire wrapped around Daichi's legs in just a few seconds.

"_Drive it backward_!" the dowser yelled at the top of his lungs.

Trey seemed to have heard him, and the blue-haired boy rushed with his flying snowboard at the monster quicker than Daichi could react and sped up and over its head. Sluggishly, the creature's single eye followed the boy, but unfortunately, it didn't lean backwards or try to walk at all.

Lyserg grumbled in annoyance as he kept a firm stance in case Daichi tried something with his wire, and then yelled, "_Push _it over if you have to!"

Chocolove darted off, and along with Trey and two others (whom Lyserg couldn't see very well), rushed at Daichi. As one, the foursome jumped into the air; in surprisingly quick retaliation, Daichi swung his arm to attack, but Lyserg, surprising himself, willed his remaining wire to wrap around the monster's arm and just barely stop him before Daichi's arm gained too much momentum to control.

With a combined yell of force, the foursome stuck Daichi's middle before bouncing back to land on the ground. The giant made an unintentional sway backwards, and Lyserg forced his wire to entangle itself from the giant's arm and to pull forcefully on Daichi's legs. In incredible slow motion, the giant lost its balance and tumbled backwards, causing dust and rock to burst into the air as the ground shook more than ever before.

With a yell, Lyserg used his wire to launch himself into the air; as he flew upward, he recalled his wire and pendulum back and, instinctively, willed the wire to construct into an upside down figure that was familiar to him, but he couldn't recall the name. In any case, the wire constructed itself into an upside down tower with what looked like a clock at the cubic top, with the crystal pendulum at the tip.

As Lyserg's attack neared, Daichi's muddled brownish-grey eye seemed to widen and darken with panic. Despite the sight, Lyserg didn't stop the attack and drove the wire-made tower straight into Daichi's single pupil.

Blood spurted out of Daichi's eye, an oily, blackish blood that spattered Lyserg's face and hair. He grimaced at the ugly sight and also the sound of Daichi's painful, dying moans, but not at the fact itself that the monster was dying. It deserved it.

As Daichi jerked on his back underneath Lyserg's feet, the green-haired dowser allowed his wire to relax back to its normal appearance instead of the powerful tower and recalled his pendulum. The crystal was coated with the oily blood, but at the high speed at which Lyserg had recalled it, most of the excess gore flew off.

Though Daichi's dying thrashes were violent, Lyserg simply refused to jump off of the monster's chest; he wanted to see this thing die firsthand. Eventually - actually, rather quickly - Daichi's struggles lessened, and his single, bloody eye rolled backwards as he ceased to move.

Daichi was dead.

Lyserg let out a small grunt of satisfaction, and suddenly the body of the monster dissolved into an enormous pile of sand that spread out a few feet. Unprepared for this odd phenomenon, Lyserg's feet sank a couple of inches into the ground before he managed to pull himself out and jump down onto the ground.

"Way to go, Lyserg!" Chocolove shouted, letting go of his oversoul and racing up to the dowser.

Though Lyserg _did _feel rather good about taking the monster out, he scratched the back of head sheepishly. "Well, you were the one who told me to go for the eye."

"That was actually pretty awesome," Trey commented as he came over, putting his snowboard onto his back with a strap. "For a girly guy."

Lyserg flushed a little at this but nonetheless chuckled. He turned around to face the blue-hared boy when he caught sight of -

"_You_," he snarled.

()()()()()()()

Ren wiped the sweat off of his brow. It was almost sweltering in the confined space of the cave thanks to his own breath. He was perspiring everywhere, especially on his hands as he moved the stones that stood in his way. A few of the rocks had clattered down at the latest tremor (a few managing to hit him - albeit lightly - in the dim light of his oversoul) - which had also been the most severe so far.

Ren shifted yet another rock towards the back of the cave. He was running out of air, he knew. What he didn't know though was how long he had been there, nor how long it would take until he used up all of the air in the area.

Though he pushed it aside like just about everything else, in reality, this made him terrified. Not just the thought of dying, but the thought of failing. Ren didn't want to lose, to become evil - he wanted to win, to become justice. He had to escape this stupid place, he had to destroy everything until he could leave - aside for himself.

()()()()()()()

Yoh blinked, staring at the green-haired boy blankly. Confused, he looked around, and, seeing no one near him, he looked back toward the boy who had just killed Daichi and pointed at himself. "What? Me?"

With almost a wordless scream, the boy - had that other guy called him Lyserg? - pushed past Trey and An and rushed at Yoh. Startled, no one made a move to stop him, and before Yoh realized what was happening, Lyserg had all-out punched him, square in the jaw.

Yoh stumbled backwards and held a hand up to where he was sure a bruise would form. Now angry as well as confused, he looked up at the boy. "What was that for?"

Lyserg's feet were spread out, and his arms were shaking at his sides, his hands in fists. His head was slightly bent and his eyes were deeply shadowed by his bangs. "_Which one are you_?" he managed in a sort of strangled hiss and growl, earning a puzzled, if not somewhat scared raised eye eyebrow from Yoh.

"Master Yoh," Amidamaru said quietly, appearing at his side. "Be prepared."

"I will," Yoh whispered back. Speaking louder, he continued to the green-haired boy, "Who're you talking about?"

"Don't play dumb with me!" Lyserg retorted, green eyes glinting with rage as his head snapped up. "Which one are you?" he repeated. "Hao, or Yoh?"

Yoh blinked, and he _remembered._


	12. Eleven

**DISCLAIMER: I don't own Shaman King.**

_Snow day today, woo-hoo :D I get to finish my homework... eventually. In any case, here's the next chapter. Yoh's gonna act incredibly OOC, but I think it's absolutely in character considering the situation. Anyways, a bit of a shorter chapter than last time, but oh well. Lyserg's still acting like a *censor*, just to warn ya XD_

_Enjoy :D_

**Eleven**

Ren wiped even more sweat off of his brow. He couldn't work too fast, lest the rocks tumble all around him, but he couldn't work too slowly, either, in case he ran out of air. Already it was becoming slightly laborious to breathe in this moist air.

_I can't just let myself die in here_, he thought stubbornly, continuing his digging. His hands were becoming raw, but they were so calloused anyway that he didn't truly feel any pain, only discomfort. He wanted fresh air badly, but he knew that he wouldn't be able to get it soon… Maybe even not at all.

()()()()()()

Flashes of a face raced behind Yoh's eyelids - a face both his and not his. He saw it clearly, he saw it a thousand times, but he couldn't remember what the person was like. Only that that person shared his face, his blood, his kinship. Hao was Yoh's twin.

And Hao was the person Yoh had killed.

Completely ignoring the world around him, Yoh fell to his knees. How could he commit such an act? How could he kill his own brother? Had it been justified? Had Hao been a bad person? Had _Yoh _been a bad person? Had he been trying to defend himself? Was it in cold blood?

…_Why…?_

The feel of something sharp on his neck brought Yoh somewhat out of his thoughts. Focusing, he saw that the thing against his neck was an oversoul powered pendulum, now sparkling clean with Daichi's blood having been eradicated along with the monster's body. Slowly, Yoh's ebony eyes followed the wire that was attached to it, and he looked up into the rage-filled face of the one who wielded the weapon, Lyserg.

"Well?" the green-haired boy snarled. "Which one are you?"

Despair coursed through Yoh. It felt like he was alone in the world, aside for Lyserg. Yoh mumbled something, and Lyserg jabbed his pendulum forward so that it caused a bead of blood to appear on the skin of Yoh's neck.

"Speak louder!" Lyserg snapped.

"Lyserg, what the hell are you doing?" Trey ran up and grabbed Lyserg's shoulder, but the boy threw him off.

"Hao killed my parents!" Lyserg yelled. "Yoh is his twin! I want to know which one I'm killing!"

"What!" Trey rushed forward again, but Lyserg extended his wire so that it wrapped around the snowboarder's body without causing the pendulum to leave Yoh's neck.

"Tell me which one you are!" Lyserg demanded. "Tell me!"

Yoh didn't feel scared at all that any one breath could be his last. His eyes were somber as he repeated what he had mumbled earlier, this time a little louder.

"I killed Hao."

()()()()()()

Manta stood very still, frozen even, as his eyes widened on Yoh. The brown-haired boy was on his knees, face serious, eyes more sullen than perhaps anything that ever existed, at least by Manta's point of view. He didn't seem scared at all by the fact that the green-haired boy - Trey had called him Lyserg - could kill him at any moment. But what Yoh had said seemed to strike Manta in the gut.

"I killed Hao."

The silence and tension in the air was completely and utterly palpable. Manta was so shocked that he wasn't aware of his trembling fingers. How could Yoh have killed someone? Granted, Manta's memories weren't all there, but surely Yoh wasn't the type to murder. And if what Lyserg had said was right, then Yoh had killed his twin… his brother. Manta didn't understand what kind of a person would do that.

Suddenly finding the strength to steel himself, Manta balled his hands into fists. They didn't know everything - they wouldn't remember until they left this place. None of them had any right to judge Yoh until they got back home.

Lyserg let out a short, strangled gasp, backed up a step, then seemed to find his footing and came forward again. "What do you mean, you killed Hao? Why would his twin kill him?"

Yoh didn't put his head in his hands or cry, but, impossibly, his eyes grew even more sad and guilty. When he spoke, his voice was surprisingly strong and calm, but still quiet and underlined heavily with depression. "…All I can remember is… that I killed him."

Lyserg opened and closed his mouth a couple of times, but nothing came out - he was at a loss for words.

"I beg of you." At this time, Amidamaru spoke up, one hand on a ghostly katana as he knelt on one knee toward the green-haired boy. "Release my master. You said that only Hao was responsible for killing your parents, not Yoh."

Lyserg jerkily open and closed his fist, as if indecisive about what he should will his pendulum to do. Finally, his eyes narrowed. "Why should I let you live, Yoh? You took away my opportunity for revenge against Hao!" His growl got lower. "I'll kill you here, then."

"No!" Amidamaru and Manta exclaimed at the same time, both making a move as if they could get in between the nonexistent space between Lyserg's pendulum and Yoh's neck. However, Yoh's words halted them.

"Let him do it."

()()()()()()

Lyserg could barely comprehend what he was hearing. He had been mere seconds away from possibly completing his revenge, only to find out that it wasn't Hao - that this twin, Yoh, had _killed _Hao. Yoh had taken away Lyserg's chance for true vengeance…

But now that Lyserg had said that he was going to kill Yoh, the twin of Hao had basically told the dowser to go ahead, like he had a suicide wish. Lyserg should have gone ahead and just speared Yoh right there, but the katana-wielder shaman's words had struck Lyserg through his rage. And Lyserg didn't like the feeling one bit, whatever it was.

"What makes you say that, Yoh?" he asked harshly, surprising himself at the question.

Yoh pierced him with melancholy ebony eyes that suddenly narrowed. "I doubt you would understand the guilt that comes with killing a person, Lyserg."

This caught Lyserg off guard, but the dowser grit his teeth. "Do you think Hao understood, either, when he killed my parents?"

"Don't either of you realize that _none _of us have the entire story yet?"

Surprised, Lyserg looked over to see a shorter boy that he hadn't noticed before, who panting from his outburst. He had dirty blonde hair, and wore a blue sweatshirt and a backpack. Next to his shoulder hovered a red-orange blob of a spirit. After the boy caught a bit of his breath back, he continued.

"No one in this stupid dimension or whatever it is remembers everything. _I _can't, _Yoh_ can't - we even had to give a name to Trey because he couldn't recall _anything _about himself!" For emphasis, he extended his arms and waved them. "Until we get out of here, none of us will have the entire story. Until then, we should work together to stay alive, and once we get out, _then _we can worry about what everybody's gonna do."

Lyserg blinked and stared at the boy, aggression suddenly gone in a moment of confusion. "Who are you?"

The boy just about fell over but quickly regained his composure, raising a fist. "Manta! My name is Manta!" He pointed at the dowser. "Were you paying attention at _all_?"

Lyserg's temper spiked again. "Be quiet!" He used his pendulum to jab at Yoh's neck again, earning an unintentional gasp from the other shaman. "I don't care if you can't remember. I remember enough!" He glared back at Yoh. "If you really want to die so badly, then I'll make sure that you go slowly."

Lyserg pulled back his pendulum a few feet in preparation for a jab at the side of Yoh's ribs.

"Wait!" Manta pleaded. "There's no need to do-"

"Be quiet, Manta," Yoh commanded hoarsely.

Lyserg paused to listen to Manta's eventually stammering retort. "B-but Yoh… You… You must've had a _reason _to… to do that. Maybe… maybe it was _because _Hao killed his parents! Maybe you were just trying to get justice!"

_Justice… _Lyserg's eyes narrowed in thought. Even in that scenario, Lyserg still wasn't completely _happy_ that Yoh had killed Hao, but… he couldn't find himself as angry as the other - more likely, he thought - scenes.

Once again becoming very short tempered and irritable, Lyserg growled. "I've made up my mind."

With a yell, the dowser let his pendulum fly, a shiny, deadly crystal dart that was aimed towards Yoh's stomach. Like before with Daichi, Lyserg wanted to see the light of life fade from Yoh, so he locked his green eyes with Yoh's ebony; the two pairs couldn't have been more different, with the green filled with rage and the ebony muddled with regret.

Lyserg grinned a maniacal grin just before his pendulum bore into Yoh - through the flab in the side of his middle, just a centimeter below his now-torn shirt. The nick drew blood, but not even a fraction of what had been expected.

Green eyes widened, and Lyserg let out an involuntary gasp at the person who had deflected his attack.

"Lyserg," Chocolove said calmly, glowing with oversoul. "I have an idea."


	13. Twelve

**DISCLAIMER: I don't own Shaman King.**

_Happy Chinese New Year :3 To celebrate, I'm home sick, presumably with the flu. Also to celebrate, we finally come out of the Ren-is-doing-nothing-arc :D There's a lot of talking, though, but eh. Gotta get a move on, enjoy! :D_

**Twelve**

Chocolove watched as Lyserg's jaw dropped. The dowser moved his mouth soundlessly for a few seconds, and then, as if catching himself, he glared.

"Chocolove, get out of the way."

"Just hear me out," Chocolove said, keeping his cool very well considering the situation. "And what I have to suggest isn't all that complete mercy and peace crap that Shorty over there was spouting."

Chocolove waited for a moment, watching Lyserg purse his lips in angry thought, jaw tautening. Finally, the dowser relaxed slightly. "What is it, Chocolove?" he asked, still more than somewhat hostile and suspicious.

"It's easy enough to just die," Chocolove explained, knowing that he had to get this right in order to stop this killing. "He wants to die, so killing him wouldn't be real revenge. Let him live with his guilt, stick around with him to make sure he doesn't forget. That's worse than just giving up completely."

Lyserg's brows furrowed, and Chocolove could just about hear the gears working in his brain. Chocolove hoped, against the risk of jinxing it, that the dowser would see the facts behind his words. Chocolove had said the truth, but really, he didn't want this person, Yoh, to be slaughtered for something that his twin had done. Chocolove didn't want needless blood to be shed, even if he didn't understand exactly why, or understand most anything at all in this weird world.

_To be honest, _Chocolove thought to himself, _we'll probably need everyone here if we want to make it out o f this place alive, like Shorty - er, Manta - said._

Finally, Lyserg sighed and slowly lowered his hand to his side, first willing his wire to untangle from around the blue-haired boy's body before he let his pendulum retract very sluggishly from where it had stopped a few feet behind Yoh after the attack. The crystal glinted in the sunlight as it retreated back to its place in the device on Lyserg's wrist, the entire weapon moving like a snake that was reluctant to leave.

Lyserg's eyes were like green chips of steel as he glared past Chocolove at Yoh. "I'll let you live for now, Yoh," he growled out. "I'll let you think about what Hao did, about what you did to your _twin._ I don't trust you. Once we get out of this though, and like… Manta said, if I remember that you really _were _on Hao's side - even though you said you killed him - I _will _kill you. Nothing will stop me."

Chocolove turned and backed up a few steps to look at Yoh. The brown-haired shaman's eyes were still dull, as if they had never shined with happiness or would never shine again. Slowly, Yoh nodded.

"I understand."

()()()()()()

Very slowly, the tension in the air dissipated, although it never truly left. Trey, arms, legs, and torso sore from the unexpected squeezing of Lyserg's wire, awkwardly rubbed at his arms as he and the others introduced themselves to Lyserg and Chocolove. Though they all knew that it would be incredibly uncomfortable situation, it would also be easier to stay alive if they all traveled together.

And so, the original groups of four and two combined to make six. A pretty weird group of six to say the absolute least, but six nonetheless.

An, who had been silent and still as she watched the previous… encounter, was brisk as she instructed everyone to sift through Daichi's leftover sand and search for the parchment. As Trey set to work in the rather gravelly shingle, she explained the situation to Lyserg and Chocolove, who were soon digging through the grit as well.

Out of the corner of his eye, Trey glanced at Yoh. The brown-haired shaman was sifting through the sand as well, but definitely without enthusiasm. Trey felt uncomfortable at the haunted, empty look in Yoh's eyes, and he looked away, awfully conscious of the fact that he could very well have killed someone as well, perhaps a brother, perhaps a sister.

Trey hoped that he wasn't that type of person.

_Maybe these symbols on my clothes are of… I don't know… A gang? No… No. That's not it. It was… _Trey groped around in his empty mind, searching for answers that felt incredibly close but also so far away that it would be impossible for him to ever get them.

Stifling a sigh, Trey decided to put away his misgivings for now. If he had killed a person or done something wrong, he would know once they got out of this place. Until then, he was going to think optimistically, keep his head up and all that. Or at least… he would try his hardest to keep his mind on the task at hand, in the present, not in the past that he didn't know.

A few minutes of searching later as Trey was sorting through the sand, his hand brushed something that was definitely paper-like. With a grin of satisfaction, he clasped his hand around it, most certainly crumpling the paper as he pulled it out along with a few grains of sand.

"I found it!" he called. There were a few exclamations, and he waited until the others were gathered around him until he unfolded the parchment and read the words that would change the world once again.

"'_Neko, the for who paralyzes you.'_"

()()()()()()

Ren was exhausted, but he knew that there was no way that there would be a way to sleep. This exhaustion was so much different than what he could remember about real drowsiness. His limbs were sweaty and shook slightly as he continued to push the rocks to the back of the cave (the space of which was rapidly diminishing), but he knew that they wouldn't stop working, at least not enough for anything more than a five minute breather. If he waited for ten minutes, his muscles and mind would probably be sharp again, but not quite as sharp as they would be with actual rest that included sleep.

Oh, he wished so badly that he was out of here…

If Ren had just sat and did nothing but breathe calmly, he probably would have had a whole lot more of minutes with actual air. But because of his rigorous attempt at escaping what he now deemed the 'Hell Hole,' the air was hot and moist with from his own slightly labored breathing. If he didn't get out soon, he was afraid that he would never be able to get out at all.

"Screw it," he said, also muttering quite the stream of curses at the rock fall and whatever God-forsaken creature that had caused this, because he _knew _that this was the fault of some idiotic bastard…

Using the dim light of his oversoul as a guide, Ren stood and retreated back a few paces from the rocks, then stood in one of the few places left in the cave that had a clear floor space. He held his Kwan Dao in both hands, holding the bladed end up in front of his face as he closed his eyes, focusing his shamanic energy to make his oversoul stronger.

_If I die in here, then I'll die fighting to get out._

The words that tumbled in a scream out of his mouth were instinctive and felt natural as he launched his attack.

"_Golden Chuuka Zanmai!"_

Just before his lightning quick, golden stabs hit the rocks, the world disappeared entirely and was replaced with a new one. Unbalanced now that there was nothing to take the force of the assault, he just barely stopped himself from falling on his face and instead caught himself on his hands and knees.

_Damn it… _Ren stood and looked around at his new surroundings, knowing that he had to adapt _yet again. _What was this, the third time? Not counting the time when he had first woken up, of course.

_Why does the world love to screw with me? _he thought grumpily to himself.

()()()()()()()

The first thing that Manta realized was the fact that there was not a sharp rock in sight. Daichi's world of the mountains had been replaced by something that wasn't really unlike Yuuna's: but instead of a sprawling jungle or a mountain, Neko's world was a simple flat-landed forest with tall, leafy green trees that stretched up into the air and let in filtered sunlight. The mossy forest floor was littered - _carpeted, _really - with ferns, and in every direction the straight, smooth bark of the tree trunks seemed to go on forever.

Manta, awed at the actually rather calming sight but still rather nervous, poked at a fern; because he was so short, they rose up to just below his face. "You guys don't think that these ferns are like those vines, do you…?"

"I hope not," Chocolove agreed, prodding one with his shoe so that the stalk swayed slightly. "I've had enough of being strangled."

"Careful of what you touch," An advised, walking cautiously ahead a little bit. "Neko could be just about anything."

As the group moved forward slowly through the trees and ferns, Manta looked back at Yoh. The brown-haired shaman was gazing both forlornly and rather blankly at the sunlight filtering in through the trees, unaware of anything else. It hurt Manta to see his friend this way, so he plastered on a convincing smile.

"C'mon, Yoh, we've gotta go," he said gently. "Don't wanna get left behind, right?"

Yoh blinked a few times and then looked at Manta, his eyes focusing. "Yeah." The brown-haired boy paused for the slightest moment, long enough for Manta to wonder if Yoh had actually answered his question, but then he added, "Let's go."

Though Manta knew that Yoh's heart was definitely not even close to the right place, he gave a wide grin. "All right."

And, surprisingly quickly given Manta's short legs and Yoh's gloomy state, the two hurried to catch up to the rest of their group. Manta's eyes darted to the back of Lyserg's head, and he wondered, again, just why Hao had killed the boy's parents, and why Yoh had killed Hao…

The short boy shook himself. He'd remember later - they all would.


	14. Thirteen

**DISCLAIMER: I don't own Shaman King.**

_Not too much to say, we touch up on Yoh's depression (how would you feel if you knew you killed your twin and you can't remember why? Poor Yoh *pats*), Manta's thoughts, Lyserg's thoughts, and more..._

_Remember how in last chapter Ren was all, "Why does the world love to screw with me?" I was incredibly tempted to say "Because it's fun and I love you." XD I'm so weird._

_Enjoy!_

**Thirteen**

Yoh didn't care. He didn't care if they were going to fight their way out of this, he didn't care that they were there. Of course, he would go along with what the others wanted. It wasn't their fault that he was in this pool of terrible, terrible guilt. He would work alongside the others - even Lyserg, because Yoh saw no reason to hate the green-haired boy - but he wouldn't care about the outcome. He didn't even know if he wanted to remember everything about himself. He didn't want to know about the identity of his… 'girlfriend,' or anything, really.

If he did want to know something, well, he wanted to know _why_.

Yoh followed Manta and the others through the woods, not truly seeing where he was going. Every once in a while, he kept seeing a flash of his twin's face in his mind, and he would squeeze his eyes shut to try and block the image. Hao's face was usually smiling - smirking, actually - but they were all disturbing to Yoh, especially the widened eyes just before he dealt the finishing blow…

Yoh hadn't realized that the others had stopped before he bumped into Trey. Startled momentarily out of his thoughts, Yoh stumbled backwards, muttering a quick apology to Trey, who looked back at him with kind eyes, albeit eyes that didn't truly understand.

"What's going on?" Manta asked.

"There are paths," An explained.

Vaguely, Yoh realized that they hadn't been walking on a path earlier, so he looked around Trey to see that the front of the group - An, Lyserg, and Chocolove - had reached the middle of three equidistant, worn-down paths, which spread out indefinitely like the spokes of a wheel.

"Which way should we go?" Trey asked as he and the rest of the group squeezed into the middle, the entire group spilling out into the other paths a little.

Lyserg suddenly shook his head as if to clear it. "Why wasn't I thinking before?" He extended his arm, letting his pendulum drop down slowly towards the ground. "Morphine," he called, and a little pink pixie spirit appeared in front of him. "Into the pendulum."

The pixie - Morphine - let out a little sound of agreement, and she integrated with the crystal that soon glowed with the shamanic energy that Lyserg fed to it. Lyserg's eyes narrowed in concentration as he stared at the medium of his oversoul, and, very, very slowly, the crystal snaked around in a circle as if to consider every option carefully. Yoh noticed that Lyserg's eyes flickered, as if he wasn't expecting his dowsing mechanism to work quite like this, but the dowser went along with it.

The pendulum bobbed up and down slightly as it neared one of the paths, and it slowed considerably in its spin, not that it was moving all that fast in the first place. In the end, it stopped, pointing down the path that was to Yoh's slight right.

"Were you dowsing for the path to take or where Neko is?" An asked.

"Neko," Lyserg grunted as he began to walk down the path where his pendulum led. "What _else_ would I dowse for," the dowser added in a mutter that Yoh just barely caught, causing the brown-haired boy to cringe at the thought of what he done to his twin…

Yoh was snapped out of his spiraling thoughts when he felt someone prodding his arm. He blinked rapidly, realizing that Trey was doing the poking while Manta was also looking at him; both had obvious concern in their eyes.

_This isn't fair to them_, Yoh thought, though the realization wasn't quite hitting home through the internal cloud of despair. _I barely even know these people, but I can't be selfish and ignore what they need of me. I have to help them out of here first - after all, they helped me before…I remembered…_

"Sorry," he apologized, trying his best mid-word to bring his voice out of a mumble. "Let's get going."

With that, he set off after the rest of the group, Trey rebounding from the situation and following after Yoh to walk beside him just a bit quicker than Manta could.

()()()()()()()

Manta cast a glance at Yoh, unable to shake off the feeling of distress that hung over him like a fog - a thing of which he certainly did not want to be reminded of. The short boy hated seeing his friend with such unimaginable pain and sadness in his eyes. It just… hurt Manta.

Manta looked away, no longer able to bear Yoh's depression and also because he didn't want his friend to catch him staring. Instead, he let his eyes drift across the group towards the newcomers, Chocolove and Lyserg, especially the dowser. He wondered what the two were thinking about. Lyserg had been talking about how Hao, Yoh's apparent twin, had killed his parents, and how he needed revenge. It made Manta uncomfortable to see such hatred in someone's eyes - almost as much as Yoh's melancholy air - but he agreed that they needed a larger group to survive this whole… ordeal.

As if the dowser could read thoughts, Lyserg glanced back for just a second, and, panicked, Manta turned away, pretending to survey the surrounding area with his eyes.

And then, he was frozen.

"Manta?" he heard Mosuke ask, and he saw the spirit ball form of his ally appear in front of him. "What is it?"

Manta couldn't answer, couldn't move. Looking confused and rather anxious, Mosuke turned to look at what his master was staring at, and froze as well.

()()()()()()

_I can't believe that I'm letting Yoh live._

Lyserg was beginning to have second thoughts. Sure, what Chocolove had said made sense - it would cause Yoh to suffer more if he was kept alive, but just the fact that Yoh shared Hao's face made Lyserg want to shudder.

_But Yoh wasn't the one to kill your parents; why kill him?_

Startled at the sudden thought - it felt like he had been talking _to himself_ - the dowser pushed it away. Yoh killed Hao - or so he (convincingly) said - and took away Lyserg's chance for true revenge against the pyromaniac. Why _shouldn't _Lyserg kill Yoh? - well, eventually, anyways.

_Maybe… Maybe he'll be useful in getting out of here, _Lyserg thought, calming slightly with the idea. _Then, once we're free of this place, I'll kill him then. Or better yet, just before we leave-_

The hair on the back of the dowser's neck rose at the feeling of being watched, and, surprised, Lyserg looked backwards to see the short boy - Manta, he had said - looking at him. However, before Lyserg could fully take in that fact, Manta quickly looked away as if he was suddenly interested in the plant life around them. This all happened so fast that Lyserg was unsure of if he had felt he was being watched in the first place.

Twisting his mouth in confusion, the green-haired dowser looked forward again. Chocolove was walking just next to him, and An was behind them, and rather close too, as if she wanted to be the first to see if Lyserg's pendulum changed direction. Not that it truly mattered, but Lyserg hadn't taken a liking to the girl; she was bossy and rather impatient, and she had explained that she had different powers than the rest of them - not that of a shaman, but the power to change at least part of her appearance, at least to change her limbs into something more warlike than just hands and feet. It made Lyserg suspicious - why was she the only one who could do this?

The dowser's thoughts jumped to that dark navy-haired kid with a sword on a stick, the one who had attacked him and Chocolove but who had disappeared just after they had all been almost strangled by those vines. Who was he, and why did he want to kill them? It was all such a mystery, but Lyserg hoped that they wouldn't have to see that boy again.

With this circle of thought completed, Lyserg's brain was about to go back onto the topic of the murderer of his parents, but Trey's words suddenly brought him to the present.

"Hey! Where did Manta go?"

Blinking his green eyes, Lyserg turned around, as did Chocolove and An. Sure enough, after a quick survey with his eyes, the dowser didn't see the short boy anywhere.

Chocolove's eyes were wide. "Do you think the monster already got him?"

Trey stared at Chocolove with quite the same expression. "What… What if it _did_?"

"We would have heard something," Lyserg argued, annoyed with their panicky states.

"Don't be stupid," An snapped at him. "Why would he stray away from us in the first place?"

"Maybe it was that crazy killer dude!" Chocolove exclaimed with a glance behind him as if that boy with the single spike on his head (what was up with that, anyway?) decided to pop out just then.

"Who?" Yoh asked, voice only slightly gone at the moment.

"This guy who tried to attack us before," Lyserg explained, becoming quite stressed out at how the situation was being handled, on top of other things. So stressed, in fact, that he didn't realize that he was answering the question of the person who had robbed him of his revenge. "He disappeared after we came to… Daichi's world, after all these vines tried to strangle us. Now," the dowser said as he lifted up his arm. "Let me-"

He broke off when he realized that his pendulum was pointing off the trail, somewhat back towards the way they had just come from, but also upwards. Confused, he looked up towards where his pendulum was indicating.

He saw a flash of yellow, and his limbs locked in place.

Without the flow of spiritual energy, Morphine was expelled from his pendulum as it swung back and forth as if it were lifeless and suspended.


	15. Fourteen

**DISCLAIMER: I don't own Shaman King.**

_I'm going to stab my internet, I wrote out an entire A/N and went to save it and POOF, no connection. I'll be more careful this time; darn it, internet, I want to watch this new Pokemon Zoroark movie (how the heck to you pronounce that, and yes, I know, why the hell am I watching it, as Dawn is my least faveorite character ever - though I do adore Piplup - as I grew up with watching Misty and Ash be all argumentive and blushy and WHY AM I RAMBLING IT'S STARTING! Why the hell is Celebi in this anyway, the 4th movie wasn't enough? Oh I miss old school Pokemon... And omg I need to YouTube this movie's scenes later. XD I'll stop now.)_

_Just to say, I'm NOT an expert on Chocolove. I tried to incorporate his battling style, but I'm not sure if it really is his style. Anyway, his battle scene is short and doesn't have a lot of detail as you can't look at Neko without being paralyzed, kind of like the basilisk in Harry Potter 2. Sorry about that, and about any odd sentence structures or if things don't make sense, I was starting to get tired when I waas writing this for NaNoWriMo. Enjoy, though!_

**Fourteen**

_Where could they be…_

Ren's eyes were narrowed as he walked through the woods. It reminded him uncomfortably of that jungle with the vines, even if it wasn't as thick of a forest, and he felt the need to keep a close watch on anything and everything. He'd been strangled and buried, and he wasn't about to let anything happen to him again. One of the reasons being was because it was just so damned irritating for him to be stuck in a situation that he couldn't control.

Now, however, he was also keeping a lookout for those two he had seen earlier. If he wanted to get out of here, he had to destroy, win, become justice - the truth of the world was to destroy or be destroyed, after all. Or, at least, it was the truth for the world he had lived in before this… if he ever did.

_But the mantras had to have come from somewhere, right? _he thought, his mind momentarily drifting from his mission. _Besides, that dream… I was in a room, and there were all those… corpses, and someone was talking… Wherever that was, it seems like it would be a long way from here._

Ren didn't snap out of his thoughts until he realized that he was crossing a flattened-down path that stretched out on either side of him. He blinked his molten gold excuses for eyes and looked up the path one way to where it stretched indefinitely, and then the other way, to where it ended abruptly about twenty feet away in a two-way fork, three if you counted the path he was on.

Ren suddenly stiffened, his heightened senses (perhaps they came from training, as his calloused hands suggested?) picking up the faint sounds of rustling ferns and the soft thuds of fast footsteps. His grip on his Kwan Dao tightened as he slipped into a ready stance, casting his eyes about for anything that could be approaching.

He caught sight of a nonhuman figure rushing through the trees ahead, paying him no mind at all. His mind registered the figure as _feline_, although he had no clue how he knew. He also was very unsure of why he decided to tail the feline figure, but his feet seemed to move of their own accord as he took off after whatever it was. Maybe it was intuition again.

Ren ducked in between the trees, following the quick figure as fast as he could. He'd already lost a lot of ground on it and could only see slight flashes of white in the distance, but the swaying ferns and slightly upturned earth was enough of a trail to follow.

However, all good things must come to an end; the figure must have decided to jump into a tree, because the ferns stopped swaying at a certain point, and the earth showed two massive indents, and then nothing. Ren couldn't see the figure anymore, nor could he hear it. Cursing mentally in his head, he turned in a slow circle, ears keen and eyes peeled in case whatever it was decided to attack him.

When nothing jumped him within five minutes (at least, it _felt _like five minutes), he relaxed only slightly and began to edge out towards where he saw that the trees were thinner - it would be a good place to get his bearings.

_And also_, Ren realized as he exited to trees to see a very short, petrified boy and a likewise frozen spirit beside him on a path, _a good place to find people._

()()()()()()()

"Don't look at his eyes!" An shrieked, using her odd power to make her arms somehow flatten out into what looked like giant leaves as she whipped in front of Lyserg's still form to block Yoh and the others from seeing whatever it had been that had made the dowser frozen.

_Paralyzed, _Yoh realized, actual fear kicking in for what felt like the first time in forever. Also for the first time in what felt like forever, Hao was pushed out of his mind as he pulled out Harusame and integrated Amidamaru into the katana. Likewise, Trey and Chocolove oversouled their spirits, and, just as Yoh was about to say it, Trey snatched up Lyserg (who stayed completely stiff, although his pendulum did rock back and forth in what could have been cynical amusement) and zipped backwards on his snowboard.

Seeing this made Yoh's eyes widen as he remembered that Manta wasn't with them. Maybe… Maybe he had been paralyzed too…

"I need to go find Manta!" he yelled, rushing back up the path. He heard An shriek in pain, and even though he felt the need to rush back, he kept going. He could rely on Trey to take care of it, as well as Chocolove. He had to find Manta; it was instinctual.

He hadn't realized how far they had walked without realizing that Manta was missing until now. Yoh had no trouble running the distance, but still, the sounds of battle that had sprung up behind him had just about faded when he finally saw Manta, standing frozen as he looked toward the trees. Relieved that the short boy at least still seemed to be alive, Yoh was about to call out when he saw another figure emerge from the trees.

The boy was definitely not what you'd consider tall, just an inch or so shorter than Yoh or Trey, but his intimidating violet spike hairstyle made up for it. He wore dark pants and a sort of red vest, as well as what registered in Yoh's mind as _Chinese slippers _on his feet. The boy carried what also impossibly registered to Yoh as a _Kwan Dao_, and under his dark bangs, almost unnatural golden eyes gleamed dangerously as he neared Manta, his now oversouled weapon beginning to rise…

Yoh's ebony eyes widened, and he rushed forward in a speed that he hadn't known existed before, whipping in front of Manta and bringing up his spirit infused katana to take the brunt of the attack.

Golden eyes flashed, and a harsh, surprisingly deep voice came from the spike-haired boy. "Don't get in my way."

Dismay entered Yoh's eyes as he stared at the boy. Couldn't he see that killing was wrong? That you would regret it forever? That it killed part of your soul along with the other person? Yoh's lips parted, and when another flash of his own face on another person appeared behind his eyes, the single word that came out of his mouth was "Why?"

The boy seemed taken aback by the question, his eyes widening, but they were immediately narrowed again, and he pushed on his Kwan Dao so that Yoh's knees started to buckle under the force.

"The one who wins is justice," the boy growled out, a bit of spittle landing on Yoh's face. "And the one who loses is evil."

Immense sadness at this boy's lost, misguided ways tore at Yoh's heart; how could someone be filled with such hatred? Killing didn't make you justice - Yoh felt like he knew that all too well. Was Hao evil, if this boy's words just happened to be true?

_Lyserg might agree to that, _Yoh thought, his resolve at rescuing Manta strengthening as he found the stamina to push back against the boy, _but I don't!_

Finding some sort of power within himself, Yoh shoved against the boy's Kwan Dao, managing to push him away. Surprised, the boy stumbled backwards, eyes wide as he held his weapon in both hands. Suddenly, he seemed to shake off the surprise, and he glowered as he slipped into an impressive and daunting fighting stance.

"I must destroy or be destroyed," he hissed, swinging his weapon over his head toward Yoh, who blocked it; he couldn't move, not if he wanted to protect the paralyzed Manta. However, the navy-haired boy's words struck him again worse than the Kwan Dao.

"I'm not going to kill you," Yoh said, staring directly into the boy's golden eyes, grimacing slightly only because of the strain on his body from the continued pressure of the boy's assault.

The boy's mouth opened in confusion, but it was gone in an instant as he retorted, "Be quiet! You have no idea what you're talking about."

"Killing people does not make you justice," Yoh insisted, his body wanting nothing more than to give up this deadlock with this boy. "Trust me; I know."

"_Shut up!" _the boy screeched, finally pulling his Kwan Dao back, but only to prepare for another strike.

()()()()()()()

It was incredibly difficult to battle a foe that you couldn't look at if you didn't want to become paralyzed. Chocolove caught snippets of Neko's shape - a white cat, or, better yet, a white tiger. At least, that was the word that entered Chocolove's mind. It felt bigger than it should have been; not a lot, but still, Chocolove was starting to notice that the stuff around here seemed to like being big.

And it was wicked annoying.

An, whose arms had shifted from leaf-like to sword-like, was bleeding from three parallel scratches on her arm, although that didn't seem to slow her down. Trey, however, had to keep his attacks long range because he couldn't risk putting Lyserg down, which led to the problem that he couldn't get in close to Neko. That in itself was difficult, because Neko was, as Chocolove had quickly found out, was, well, quick.

Good thing Chocolove was quicker.

He dodged a swipe, feeling the speed he gained from Mic with his oversoul. He looked around, being careful not to accidentally look Neko in the eye, lest he become paralyzed, and saw that that was exactly what An had managed to do, due to the fact that she wasn't moving a muscle as the white tiger rushed at her.

With both incredible speed and power, Chocolove sprinted forward and rammed into Neko, squeezing his eyes shut in case they met with the monster's as he swiped at Neko's flank with his shaft claws. Neko let out a feral growl as Chocolove felt blood spatter on his arm, and he was suddenly knocked backwards through the air, falling on his face.

Still afraid of becoming paralyzed, Chocolove kept his eyes closed and his other senses open as he stood. He could smell Neko's blood, but that scent was everywhere. He listened for paw steps, but all he could hear was Trey's heavy breathing, wherever he was.

Chocolove tensed, sensing the tremble of earth, and he whipped around with his shaft claw extended, and he felt it rip and sink into flesh. Neko let out what could only be described as a gurgling, dying moan, and Chocolove knew that he had hit the tiger's throat. The monster scratched at his arms, but the attempts were weak and feeble, and Chocolove didn't open his eyes until Neko stopped struggling and until its weight disappeared from his hand completely.

As Chocolove let go of his oversoul and looked at the ground, all that was there was a pile of white ashes.

It had been a lucky hit.


	16. Fifteen

**DISCLAIMER: I don't own Shaman King.**

_Sorry I left you guys hanging for a few days, only to be given this filler. I got the stomach flu (terrible, so terrible I will not give out details). Anyways, here's Fifteen, like I said: filler. Oh well, I'll update soon._

_Can't think of anything that needs to be said, but I'll help you guys visualize the new "world." If anyone's played Super Smash Bros. Brawl (the newest one), it's like the storyline's last battle stage. A really black, inky world that has floor in places where it seems like it shouldn't, with sworls of color in the distance. Dunno if that helped, but oh well._

_Enjoy!_

**Fifteen**

Trey felt Lyserg's stiff limbs finally loosen as the dowser gasped for air. Gratefully, Trey lowered his snowboard to the ground and half placed, half dropped the green-haired boy on the ground. He hadn't been able to get in close enough to pull the paralyzed An out of the way of the battle that could definitely be classified as being one-on-one between Neko and Chocolove. But at least Chocolove had won.

Trey watched Lyserg breathe heavily on the ground, then looked up to see Chocolove and An coming over so that they could all regroup - An seemed to have recovered quickly, probably because she hadn't been paralyzed as long as Lyserg had.

Realizing that the threat was over, at least for now, Trey deactivated his oversoul, and Kororo cooed as she appeared next to him, causing him to smile. However, the momentary calm air was broken when Trey realized that their group was two short.

"We need to go find Yoh and Manta," he said, taking a step back towards the path as Lyserg found the strength to stand up.

"Wait." An was suddenly in front of Trey, barring his way. "We need to get the parchment first."

"We can't read it until we know where Yoh and Manta are, though," Trey argued. "We need to go find them."

"Of course," An retorted. "I'm not an idiot, unlike you."

Taken aback, Trey couldn't find any words to say - as neither could Lyserg or Chocolove - as An walked away over to Neko's ashes and used her power to extend her arm down, and with relatively little shifting of the debris, she pulled out a small slip of paper. With that being done, she turned back towards Trey and the others.

"Well?" she asked. "What are we waiting for?"

Trey blinked. "R-right," he stammered. He looked up and down the trampled path to get his bearings for which way Yoh had went, and then he led the way at a quick walk. However, before he could go too far, he heard words that made him want to whip around and punch the person who uttered them in the face.

"'_Takeshi, the foe who guillotines.'_"

()()()()()()()

Manta hated not being able to do anything. He couldn't move, couldn't breathe, but he could see, and he could still hear. Unable to explain how he could not be breathing but still be alive, he watched as Yoh stood his ground in front of him, shielding him for that terrifying boy with that sword on a stick, or whatever it was. Maybe a spear?

Well, it didn't matter what kind of weapon it was; it was still a weapon, and Manta was liable to die within a split second of that thing slicing through him, especially with the words that were coming out of the boy's mouth, terrible things of destruction and so-called justice. Though Manta couldn't fully see him with Yoh as well as Mosuke in the way, the weapon of the navy-haired boy was lifted as he screeched, bringing his weapon around in a wide arc.

In the exact same moment, Manta felt whatever what was holding his muscles back release its hold, and with a quickness he never knew existed for him, Manta, without even reaching for Mosuke, ducked past Yoh and tackled the boy's leg, unbalancing him and causing the two of them to fall to the ground, the boy falling on top of him. Manta gasped in pain as the boy's knee jammed into his lower leg, and he scrambled away.

Definitely favoring his now-injured leg, Manta looked back only once he was a safe distance away. Thanks to whatever deity who was on Manta's side, the demonic boy hadn't chased after him, and was instead now crouching with his weapon at the ready, glaring at Yoh with undisguised hatred but also emotions that Manta could not read.

Yoh held his oversoul powered katana at the ready, but he looked far from ready to battle. Instead, it looked as if he was about to… not cry, not that, but it didn't look like he was enjoying this battle in the slightest. He looked like he was just about ready to give up.

And then, without any warning at all, the boy and Yoh vanished, along with the rest of the world, to be replaced with a dimension unlike anything that had come before.

Immediately disoriented in the inky black, he saw blues, pinks, greens - just about every color imaginable was swirled together at some point in the distance, although black stood out the most. It was like Manta was floating alone in the middle of space - _space_, that was the place that was… that was beyond the earth's atmosphere, whatever those two things were. There was no discernable ground beneath Manta, but it felt as if he was on something solid, something tough, not like the springy ground of the forest before but of something that could have been either wood or cement, or something in between. Other than the swirls of color in the distance, there were no landmarks for Manta to see.

And this made him panicked.

He heard Mosuke say his name - at least he wasn't _completely _alone - but he wouldn't let his spirit ally talk him into resting. He struggled to his feet, and, limping heavily, he took off in the direction that he thought he had last seen Yoh.

()()()()()()()

"_What the hell_!"

Startled, Lyserg watched as Trey spun around to face An, absolute fury written clearly on his face. However, before the blue-haired boy could do anything - and by the way he brought up his fist, it looked as if he was going to hit the girl - Chocolove expertly intervened by holding him back by the shoulders. However, just because he was preventing the bashing-in of An's face, didn't mean that he was on her side, either.

"Why did you do that?" he asked, slowly and clearly but with anger underlying his words.

"Because she's a bi-"

An cut Trey off by darting forward and clamping a hand over his mouth. Immediately, he started struggling against Chocolove's confinement, his eyes narrowed with hatred at the betrayal. However, when An started talking, Lyserg saw that he ceased his thrashing.

"Don't call me that," she hissed, her lizard-green eyes tightening. "I don't care what it takes, I'm getting out of this place as quickly as possible. If it means sacrificing any one of you, I'll do it without hesitation. Until that point, though, I'll work as a group. But those two don't make it, well, too bad. _I _need to get out of here. I _need _to get back to my home."

Lyserg's eyes widened as, with that, An withdrew her hand from Trey's mouth and retreated backwards a couple of steps, her eyes harsh, steely glints of green ice. All three boys stared at her until Trey suddenly broke away from Chocolove, muttering something under his breath as he straightened out his jacket. Somehow, this seemed to alleviate the tension in the air, and Lyserg visibly relaxed enough to look around at their new surroundings.

There were in some sort of area that felt like it had no real dimension. The main color was could only be described as a spacey black, and in the distance there were swirls of blue, pink, green, red - whatever color that was in their own spectrum was there, as well as, almost unfathomably, others. There didn't appear to be any ground, but they seemed to be standing on something solid and level.

"Which way do we go?" Trey asked; Lyserg almost expected his voice to echo in the vast space, but it didn't.

"I… This is weird," Chocolove finally said. He turned to An. "What was the thing that we're supposed to take out this time?"

"'Takeshi,'" An quoted without even having to look at the slip of parchment that she held in between her fingers. "'The foe who guillotines.'"

Lyserg shuddered at the sentence and unconsciously reached up toward his neck, as if to make sure that it was still there. Just the thought of his head being severed from his body made him gulp, made him want to throw up, but he resisted the urge, mostly because his stomach was empty.

"Just like before," An went on, "we'll have to keep a very close watch. You… Lyserg," she said, pointing at the dowser. "Can you hone in on Takeshi's energy?"

"No," Trey interrupted. "We need to find Yoh and Manta first. Then we'll find Takeshi."

An returned the blue-haired boy's glare. "We're going to find Takeshi."

"No."

"Yes."

Trey turned sharply to Lyserg. "Either you dowse for Yoh and Manta, or you don't dowse at all. They come first."

"Damn it, they don't!" An looked as if she was about to stalk forward and slap out Trey's internal organs, but Lyserg cut in on them both.

"An, I'll dowse for Yoh and Manta first, and _then _I'll dowse for Takeshi. But if he's like the other monsters we've come across, he'll come looking for us; he won't run away. It would be best for all of us to stick in a group. I would rather that we'd all been together before we moved on after Neko, but what's done is done and we have to keep going. Got it?"

An's angry, steely eyes met Lyserg's for a full minute before she relaxed and backed down. "I see your logic," she admitted finally. "But I don't like it."

"I didn't say that you had to," Lyserg pointed out, immensely relieved and glad that a real fight hadn't broken out. "Thank you."

In response, all An did was cross her arms and look away with her eyes.

Chocolove turned to Lyserg. "Well?" he prompted. "Do that… that whatever it is you do."

Somehow amused in the midst of the situation, Lyserg raised an eyebrow. "You mean dowse?"

"Yeah," Chocolove agreed. "That."

Lyserg smirked, his revenge-filled thoughts gone completely, at least for the moment, as he lifted his arm and let his crystal pendulum descend on its wire.

"Morphine," he beckoned. "Into the pendulum."


	17. Sixteen

**DISCLAIMER: I don't own Shaman King.**

_Okay, bit of a warning: Takeshi looks kinda freakish, especially in my mind. Maybe I'm overreacting, I don't know. But at the time of writing this chapter, I was a) tired, and b) possibly out of my mind with boredom. He's supposed to look freaky, but I don't know, maybe he turned out worse than I orginally- wait, you know what, I'm just going to stop talking about this topic altogether._

_I'm going to have to remind myself to do so, but next chapter I'll explain at bit more about the... logic, I guess, of Takeshi's dimension. To avoid spoilers for this chapter._

**Sixteen**

Ren couldn't believe this idiot, this stupid, bastard boy with the brown hair with those atrocious orange headphones tucked behind his ears. He was a liar, he had to be, he had to be the most infuriating thing that Ren had ever come across, so irritating that Ren could hardly think straight, could hardly keep his thoughts from going in circles, from repeating themselves in his mind like he couldn't even understand himself.

Ren was so preoccupied with the incredible desire to absolutely slaughter this boy - who he somehow dubbed Orange Headphones - that he just about saw red, but he didn't see the change in scenery around them. All he wanted to do was end this boy's senseless talk, end his life, take the stupid, odd light out of his eyes that Ren would never admit made him scared. Not scared for his life, but scared deep inside himself of something that he didn't know.

With a wordless howl of rage, Ren launched himself at Orange Headphones and swung his Kwan Dao, blindly aiming for the boy's neck, but Orange Headphones easily blocked the attack.

"You don't understand what you're doing," he said quietly, his eyes locking with Ren's; it made the navy-haired boy feel exposed, like Orange Headphones was staring directly into his soul.

"_Shut up_!" Ren screeched again, swinging his Kwan Dao around so that the small spear-tipped end whipped out to trip Orange Headphones. However, Orange Headphones just… just _sadly _hopped over the attack and forcefully pushed Ren backwards with his oversoul, forcefully but also without lethal intent.

As Ren flew backward through the air, the strangest feeling occurred to him; it was like vertigo times ten, a gut-wrenching, head-spinning sensation that truly made him want to throw up, but it only lasted for a split second. One second, Ren was looking at Orange Headphones as he flew backward, and the next moment, he was scrambling to his feet to find that he had somehow gotten behind the brown-haired boy.

For the first time, he noticed that they weren't in the forest anymore, and were now in some sort of odd dimension, but he didn't stop to smell the nonexistent roses, or look at the scenery, either. Instead, while Orange Headphones was still looking about in confusion for Ren, the navy-haired boy took the opportunity and charged.

At the last possible moment, Orange Headphones realized that Ren had somehow gotten behind him and just barely managed to dodge the attack, although Ren was pretty sure that he had at least sliced off a bit off his hair, though this consolation did nothing to subdue Ren. Unconsciously yelling, he swiped repeatedly at Orange Headphones with his Kwan Dao, but each time he slashed out, the brown-haired boy kept dodging.

Needless to say, Ren was _pissed._

He continued the assault, pressing forward, but Orange Headphones kept backing up, kept evading his attacks. However, just when Ren felt that he was going to finally get in a hit - possibly fatal - Orange Headphones vanished. Not as if he had disappeared in the blink of an eye, but like he had been swallowed by something, by the darkness itself.

Taken aback, Ren took a step backwards, and though his keen senses picked up the sound of someone behind him, he wasn't quick enough to whip around and attack or dodge before he was pushed forward into the consuming darkness. Once again, the sensation of intense vertigo and just about gut-rearranging whatever it was took over him for a split second, and he found himself facing Orange Headphones, who immediately elbowed him aside and down onto the ground.

Winded, Ren couldn't find the strength to get up for a moment, and in that spare amount of time, Orange Headphones leaned over to look at him in the eye.

"You need to stop this. Killing is something that you will regret for the rest of your life."

Thoughtlessly, a growl erupted from Ren's throat. "I won't regret killing _you_!"

He jumped to his feet and slashed at Orange Headphones, but the brown-haired boy blocked the attack and held it there in a deadlock.

"Killing does not make you justice," Orange Headphones said, his black eyes sad and knowing, as well as… concerned. "It makes you evil."

"Shut… Shut _up_," Ren hissed, though his voice was beginning to lose its original volume.

Orange Headphones didn't let up in both the deadlock and in his speech. "My name is Yoh," he introduced himself. "Stop attacking, and we can talk about this. I'm not going to let you kill me, but I'm not going to kill you, either."

_Why is everyone dead?_

Shocked at the thought that had suddenly entered his head, Ren stopped pushing his Kwan Dao against Orange Headphones' - Yoh's - katana. With the pressure suddenly gone, Yoh accidentally pushed Ren backwards, but the navy-haired boy hardly noticed as he fell onto one knee.

_Why are you killing everyone?_

Ren vaguely heard the sound of an odd groan, not unlike that made by metal upon metal, and this snapped him back into defensive action, and he whipped his head around to see something appearing out of the void that could very well have been the one that Ren had kept falling into.

The figure was only just barely humanoid, with a sort of identifiable head and torso with four limbs, but it was unlike anything Ren had ever seen. Its flesh was silver - if it could be called flesh, for while it flexed like human arms and legs but did so in a curve and not a full bend - and it had no true face. In fact, its head appeared to be a twisted pipe that was like an upside down 'U,' and its torso was just a thin rod. One of its arms was a long shaft that ended in the blade of a what appeared to be a shovel, while the other ended in what was some sort of sword. Its legs were both thin sword-like rods (some part of Ren's mind associated the word _fencing _with them), and they somehow held steady even though they looked too fragile to hold up the body.

Another thing about the monster was that it was quick.

Before Ren could react, the blade-monster was rushing at him, and also before he could react, he realized that the attack wasn't going to hit him, mainly because someone else was blocking it.

_Why are humans so dirty?_

Golden eyes wide, Ren stared at Yoh's backside.

_No one…can help it…_

()()()()()()()

Chocolove heard Lyserg curse under his breath as his pendulum zipped around in yet another direction. The glowing crystal had done that several times already, and each time, the group had changed direction to follow, but it was impossible to tell if you had made any progress in this weird dimension.

Chocolove felt once again the impossible urge to crack a joke, but he pushed the feeling down. He didn't even have the slightest clue as to why he could even _think _about making jokes after what had happened to him in his life - or, at least, what he remembered of it. What made him want to make people laugh? What separated him from Lyserg, who had also lost both of his parents?

He sighed slightly as he lifted his hands behind his head. _I hate not knowing things._

He thought about how he had defeated Neko; by closing his eyes and focusing his other senses. He hadn't necessarily forgotten about his sight, but he had focused on other things, the things that had helped him in the situation. Maybe that was at least sort of like how he could have just… well, moved on from his hardships and focused on the better things in life.

This theory… actually made sense, too…

"Whoa, look!"

Chocolove blinked at Trey's outburst, torn from his thoughts, and he looked out in front of him, squinting slightly, to see three figures in the distance, one looking as if it was on the ground, but Chocolove couldn't really make him - or her, if that was the case - out. One of the ones standing was easy enough to identify as Yoh by the orange headphones and the blue aura surrounding his katana, but the last one didn't look human at all, and even though there was no source of light in the world (which raised a question in Chocolove's mind: how could they see each other?), the creature's body shone with a metallic glint.

"That must be Takeshi!" An realized.

"Chocolove," Lyserg said seriously; Chocolove glanced to see that the dowser's rigid eyes were staring directly in front of them. "Look at that guy on the ground. Doesn't that look like-"

"The guy who jumped us!" Chocolove exclaimed, beginning to run forward simultaneously along with the rest of the group. He could see it now; the odd hairstyle, barely noticeable in the darkness of the surrounding area, as well as the boy's basic features. Chocolove didn't know what he would do once he got over to him and Yoh, but he knew he had to go.

Their feet somehow slapped against the nonexistent ground (or, at least, the ground that couldn't be seen), and their breath was heavy as they rushed as fast as they could towards the endangered duo. Chocolove felt adrenaline course through him, and even though it hadn't really been that long since he had killed Neko, he felt ready for another fight, ready to face yet another enemy. After all, if Chocolove's math was right, after Takeshi, there were only two more monsters left, weren't there?

"Run faster!" An urged, her long, quick strides managing to overtake Chocolove at the head. In response, Chocolove pushed his feet off against the ground with even more force, momentarily relishing the speed that came.

His mind didn't immediately register the fact that An had disappeared - fallen, more accurately - until he felt all solid vanish under his foot. With a tenfold sensation of vertigo and an overwhelming urge to vomit, Chocolove plummeted.


	18. Seventeen

**DISCLAIMER: I don't own Shaman King. No way, no how. 'Cept I own two volumes of the manga (as of right now).**

_Aha! So happy, just saw _I Am Number Four, _. :D It was soooo epic. Anyways, violence! Blood! (Sorta) Be excited, peoples, only... 11 more chaps if I'm correct._

**Seventeen**

Manta screeched in surprise as well as pain as several unidentifiable figures literally fell out of the sky and landed on him. His yell was cut off, however, when the breath was knocked out of him.

"…Ow…" someone mumbled above him; he had a very large, almost convincing urge to hit whoever had said that.

"Get off!" Manta heard Mosuke shout: the spirit had thankfully come to his rescue. "You all landed on Manta!"

Even more pain flowed through Manta's limbs as sounds of shock and realization reverberated above him as the group of whoever had landed on him scrambled to get off. Even after the last person was off him, Manta didn't move; instead, he almost comically twitched, trying to get the feeling back in his limbs. He didn't think anything was broken, but his leg still didn't feel all that great either.

"Hey, it's Manta!"

Rather roughly, Manta was picked up and given, what else but, a noogie. He scrunched his eyes up in pain, trying to block out the discomfort. Why did these things have to happen to him?

"Manta, where were you?" someone asked; when whoever had given him the noogie put him down, Manta opened his eyes and realized that it was Chocolove who had spoken, and that Trey was the one who had given him such a… warm welcoming. An was there too, looking very peeved about something or other (but this didn't set off any alarms in Manta's head), as well as Lyserg.

"That monster in the last world," Manta began, rubbing his hurting head and favoring his hurt leg. "Neko, I think it was? I saw its eyes, and it paralyzed me, but - but _you all forgot about me_!" he suddenly yelled, pointing a finger at the four of them.

Trey chuckled and scratched the back of his head in embarrassment. "Well, we _remembered _you, at least. We were about to head back for you when that tiger attacked us and froze Lyserg and An. But Chocolove here just slaughtered it," he added, elbowing the said boy in the ribs.

Chocolove swatted his hand away. "Don't hit my funny bone, I'll laugh till I die."

Manta opened his mouth to continue with his story but then looked at Chocolove strangely, instead voicing, "The humerus bone is in the upper arm, not the ribs."

Trey and Lyserg looked at Chocolove as well, although Lyserg seemed to have an 'oh-no-he-did-it-again' look. Deciding to save Chocolove from some humiliation, Manta went on.

"Then this - this guy with this sword on a stick just came at me!" For emphasis, he spread his arms as he added, "I mean, the weapon had a _huge _blade on the end! He looked like he was gonna _kill _me, but Yoh came and stopped him! That must've been about the time that you managed to kill Neko, because I was able to stall that guy, but I got hit in the leg." At this, he pointed to his lower calf. "Then we came here, and I got separated from them. After a bit of limping around, you guys fell out of the sky."

Lyserg had visibly stiffened. "What did the guy look like, Manta?" he asked, very seriously.

Manta shuddered at the memory of the hate-filled eyes. "His eyes were gold, and he had weird purple hair that was… I don't know how to describe it…" For lack of good words, Manta lifted his arms and formed his hands into a triangle at the top of his head.

Chocolove crossed his arms. "That was the guy that attacked me and Lyserg back just before those vines started strangling us."

"We just saw him, too," Trey added, pointing upwards, vaguely in the 'direction' that they had come from to land on top of Manta. "From the looks of it…" He trailed off, and An finished for him.

"It looked as if he was being defended from Takeshi by Yoh."

Manta couldn't say he was surprised at Yoh's actions by what he had heard him say to the purple-haired boy, but he blinked at the unfamiliar name. "Takeshi? Is that the newest monster?"

An nodded. "He guillotines."

Manta gulped unconsciously, as if to make sure that his throat was still there. "You mean… like they did in the French Revolution, with that thing you put your head in?"

All the others looked at him strangely for the words 'French' and 'Revolution,' but An replied with, "It looked more like he would just decapitate you with these swords that were on his arms."

"I see…," Manta muttered, considering the situation. He hadn't realized it before, but there was an overpowering desire in the pit of his stomach to make sure that Yoh was all right. "We'd better get a move on and find Yoh, then."

"On it," Lyserg answered, extending his arm. As he began to dowse, Manta wondered just what the green-haired boy thought of Yoh. Was he still hostile towards the headphones-wearing boy, or could he tolerate him now? Lyserg didn't seem to want to murder Yoh anymore, at least (or, at least, Manta didn't think so). He decided to keep an eye out, just in case.

The glowing crystal jittered around for a moment as if to get its bearings (as like in Neko's world, Lyserg's brows furrowed at the odd action, but he didn't verbally question it). But then, all at once, it tugged at the wire and pulled taut, slightly diagonally upwards, if Manta's eyes weren't deceiving him.

Without a word to spur them on, the group headed off in that direction.

()()()()()()()

Yoh _really _didn't want to have to fight against this thing, especially after he had already fought against the purple-haired boy, whatever his name was. All he wanted to do was to give up, to give his tired arms a much deserved rest. But he couldn't let his guard down. He couldn't let this thing kill him, or kill the other boy. He wasn't going to allow it.

The blade monster had been about to attack the purple-haired boy with both arm appendages, but Yoh had intercepted the attack with his oversoul. Currently, he and the monster were at a standstill, but Yoh knew that with his opponent's arms being essentially free while he had to handle his one weapon, he could be stabbed in a heartbeat. He had to change the situation, he had to somehow gain the upper hand, if there was an upper hand to be gained here.

Deciding to use his instinct, Yoh summoned all the strength he could and just barely managed to push the blade monster away from him so that the creature had to flip over backwards to land on its, well, lack of feet.

"What the hell are you _doing_?" shouted the boy behind Yoh.

"I told you," Yoh replied, resisting the urge to look backwards at the navy-haired boy as he prepared to fully battle with the blade monster lest he be attacked. "I'm not going to kill you, nor am I going to let you die."

With that, he jumped forward, but before he could reach the blade monster, the metal-like weapon creature jumped backwards, melting into the swallowing shadows. Instantly realizing that the monster could come out and attack him from any which angle from the portal-like darkness, Yoh crouched in a defensive position and relied heavily on Amidamaru's sight as well as his own as he looked around, ready to dodge or attack at a split-second's notice.

There was a clang of metal on metal, and Yoh whipped around to see that the purple-haired boy was trying to defend himself against the blade monster. Immediately, Yoh sprang in to help, slashing at the creature's back, but the monster jumped back once again into the shadows without getting hit. Instinctively, as the boy oversouled his spirit into his Kwan Dao once again, he and Yoh stood back to back, their weapons at the ready.

An odd understanding occurred between the two of them; in that instant, they felt united against this odd monster. It was an understanding that didn't need words: it felt instinctual, like a memory that couldn't be remembered consciously but subconsciously. As if they had fought together before.

In the few seconds of calm, the boy said hoarsely, "I'm… I'm Ren."

Yoh found himself smiling a true smile, not something forced. "Nice to meet you."

Despite Ren's apparent mood, he snorted slightly. "We meet under quite the circumstances, Yoh."

"But it's nothing we can't handle, is it?" Yoh asked, his tone light but his eyes still peeled for any sign of activity.

He heard Ren let out a small grunt-like noise that he somehow _knew _was associated with a smirk. "No, it's not. But listen, the sword on its arm… It's familiar."

Before Yoh had a chance to respond, the blade monster was suddenly there again, right in front of him, preparing to strike with just the sword blade that Ren had been referring to. Within a split-second, Yoh realized that he could vaguely recognize the weapon too; it was attached to the blade monster's arm by the hilt, and the entire sword was pure steel. Nevertheless, while it was familiar, it was still a weapon that was being used by something that wanted to kill him, so Yoh struck out to attack under the enemy's attack, but the blade monster expertly brought its shovel arm up to block.

However, Yoh saw this as it was happening, and he shifted his attack just slightly so that, instead of hitting the blade of the shovel, he hit the shaft, very effectively and cleanly cutting off the shovel head, which flew through the air before landing on the invisible ground with a surprisingly clear _clink_.

The blade monster seemed surprised (if you could conclude this, since it didn't have any facial features at all), and it hopped backwards, but not far enough so that it disappeared into the portal-blackness again. It stood still and seemed to study the two boys for a moment before lifting its technically deformed arm (although its entire persona appeared deformed). The tip of it glowed in a rainbow of glittery colors for a moment, taking the shape of a sort of dagger before it solidified and regained a sort of rustic brown color.

Yoh's eyes widened as he realized what the creature had just conjured into existence upon its arm. It was his other medium for Amidamaru, his antiquity. He didn't know how this blade monster had gotten it, but it was his, and he wanted it back; he could remember using it, along with his katana, Harusame, to do… something he couldn't quite recall, but it was on the tip of his tongue, and he could surely do whatever it was he could do with the antiquity if he got a hold of it, he knew he could.

"If I could get that antiquity…" he muttered out of the corner of his mouth, to both Amidamaru and Ren at the same time. "I know it would help. I know it."

"It's the same with the sword," Ren agreed, turning so that he wasn't back to back with Yoh anymore, holding his Kwan Dao in both hands as he scrutinized the blade monster. He crouched low, as if in preparation to spring. "We'll have to try to cut the both of them off."

Yoh nodded. "Sounds like an idea."

The blade monster cocked its head, or at least, what _appeared_ to be its head, and it was suddenly darting back towards them. Quickly, Yoh and Ren dodged to the sides, and the blade monster made a split second decision to come after Yoh. Somewhat panicked but keeping his cool, Yoh kept going until he felt the dizzying sense all around him, and he suddenly found himself rushing towards Ren. Instinctively, he ducked to the side, and he heard Ren grunt with effort, and the sound of ripping metal rung through the air.

Yoh whipped back around to see that Ren had cut off one of the blade monster's appendages. His eyes caught the discarded weapon spiraling through the air, and his jaw dropped when he realized that the antiquity could very well break upon impact with the ground.

He jumped to his feet and rushed toward it behind Ren, who was fighting to keep the blade monster occupied. Yoh's ebony eyes followed the arc of the antiquity through the air, and for a terrifying moment, he thought he wouldn't make it. He pushed with his feet and jumped forward, reaching out his hand.

He just barely managed to secure the antiquity in his hand as he hit the ground. With a small grunt of breathlessness, he looked at the rustic weapon that was held awkwardly in his hand, and he breathed a sigh of relief that it was safe.

His sigh turned into a scream when the tip of the blade monster's foot drove through his arm.


	19. Eighteen

**DISCLAIMER: I don't own Shaman King. Only own volumes 1&4 of the manga. :P**

_Not much to say. Got the cold. Watched "The Girl Who Leapt Through Time" - watch it. I haven't watched many anime movies, but that was good. Really good._

_Chapter's a bit of filler, I apologize. Enjoy, while I go work on Muffled._

**Eighteen**

Lyserg didn't know why his pendulum kept charging in all sorts of different directions. Maybe it was the area that they were in. He was focusing all this energy on dowsing for Yoh, picturing the brown-haired boy's face in his mind as he fed his spiritual energy into his medium.

The green-haired dowser muttered whenever his crystal pendulum spurred off in another direction, pulling its allowance of wire taut, but he would always turn to follow it, as did the rest of the uneasy group. However, when the pendulum almost pierced his eye, well, he had had enough.

"Damn it!" he cursed in both surprise and irritation as he cut off his flow of spiritual energy to his medium, letting the crystal pendulum swing limply towards the ground on its wire.

"Do you think there's something wrong with it?" Trey asked, walking forward to prod the device on Lyserg's wrist with his finger.

"Like I have any clue," Lyserg snapped, glaring daggers at his pendulum as Morphine appeared at his shoulder. He felt her concern, palpable in the air, but he ignored it.

An raised an eyebrow as she came around in front of them, her arms crossed as she studied Lyserg and his pendulum. "Maybe the problem's not with the dowsing," she suggested, "but with the dowser."

Lyserg looked up sharply at her. "What makes you say that?"

An shrugged. "I'm just saying, maybe something's keeping you from dowsing. Which are you searching for: Takeshi, Yoh, or that other boy?"

Lyserg didn't see what she was getting at, but he replied, rather harshly, with "Yoh."

"Mmm-hmm," An hummed, somewhat self satisfactorily, as she turned away slightly.

Lyserg took a step towards her, rage building up inside him so that his blood began to boil. "What do you mean, _An_?" he asked, unintentionally underlying her name with scorn but not sorry for doing so at all.

An lifted one hand carelessly into the air. "Takeshi would be easy enough to dowse for, as would that other boy, but you chose to dowse for Yoh, and you can't find him. Why do you think that is?"

Lyserg, confused, said nothing, but continued to glare at An.

An shrugged once more. "It's easy enough to see that you still haven't quelled your thoughts about them. You must have your doubts about letting him live, but also doubts about your wish to kill him. Not just because you think he deserves to stay alive so that he has longer to regret what he did to… whoever he killed, I can't keep up with names well. But, little Lyserg," she continued, waggling her finger slightly, "you don't want to kill him because, somehow in the very short time you've known him here, you've gotten the feeling that it's not right to kill him. Now, I wouldn't understand _why _you would feel that way - maybe you don't either; perhaps that feeling comes from the time before we came here - but your mixed feelings are muddling your abilities to dowse, are they not?"

Lyserg found that his hostility had drained from him to be replaced by something that he didn't understand. He felt very tired. He wanted his revenge on Hao for burning his parents, but Yoh had taken that away from him. Yoh had also given himself a terrible guilt that made the dowser believe (with persuasion from Chocolove) that it would be better for Yoh's punishment to be to live and not die.

But… the thought had been running through the dowser's head that it wasn't _Yoh's _fault that his parents were dead; it was Hao's. It wasn't Yoh's fault that Hao had killed his parents - at least, not that Lyserg could remember, but he had this gut feeling that that wasn't the case. This was all Hao's fault.

Lyserg knew it was the truth. Yoh had nothing to do with his parents' deaths, but it was just hard to the dowser to get the fact out of his head that Hao and his twin shared the same face, that one could be so evil and the other could be… good, even though Lyserg hadn't known Yoh for that long in this world. He knew that it was unfair to treat Yoh so terribly, especially when the boy already felt such remorse for killing another person, but Lyserg just… Lyserg just couldn't forgive and forget. Not right now.

The dowser sighed and held out his arm once again. "I'll dowse for that other guy."

()()()()()()()

Ren didn't understand why he had chosen to fight with Yoh, why he had chosen to put aside his murderous attempts - at least for now - and side with the person he had just _despised _a moment ago. He also didn't know why, but fighting with Yoh on his side felt… almost natural, as easy as if they had done it before.

_Perhaps… Maybe we did, once, before I forgot…_

Ren refocused on the battle at hand as Yoh appeared in front of him through the odd darkness. He watched as Yoh darted to the side, and his golden eyes narrowed as he saw the first bit of the blade monster appear in front of him. With a great effort put into the action, Ren swung his Kwan Dao forward and slashed at the creature, and he was rewarded with the sound of spiritually-infused metal slicing metal, and he saw what Yoh had called the antiquity fly through the air. Trusting that the brown-haired boy would be able to catch the rustic weapon, Ren parried an attack by the blade monster and twisted his own weapon in an attempt to stab at his enemy. However, before he could do so, the blade monster quickly and roughly pushed him, causing him to fly backwards.

Ren managed to flip over to land on his feet, crouching upon impact with the invisible ground to cushion himself. He was about to find the blade monster and Yoh with his eyes when he heard a shriek of pain reverberate through the air, bringing his attention to where Yoh was on his stomach with the blade monster looming over him as he held his antiquity in his outstretched hand.

The blade monster was piercing Yoh's arm with one of its sharp sword feet.

Ren didn't have to look twice to see the blood spurting from Yoh's wound. He was about to rush forward and attack when he noticed something glint on the ground, and on instinct he picked up the blade of the shovel that Yoh had cut off of the blade monster's arm and hurled it.

Before he could see whether or not his improvised projectile had hit its mark, Ren whipped around and rushed into the blackness, again feeling the dizzying sense of vertigo for a split second before he saw Yoh on the ground again (this time more up close and from a different angle) as the blade monster _appeared _to be looking to where Ren had hurled the spade from.

"_Golden Chuuka Zanmai!"_ Immediately sensing his opportunity, Ren readied his spiritually infused Kwan Dao and sent out a volley of lightning quick golden jabs at the blade monster. Immediately becoming battered by the assault, the creature jumped backwards from Yoh, who let out a hiss of pain but quickly rose to his feet and held his katana in one hand and the antiquity in the other.

Ren cut off his attack and hurried to Yoh's side, keeping an eye on the blade monster, who appeared to have indents all over its body apart for the horribly familiar sword that was still attached to one of its arms. Ren wished he knew what the sword meant to him, he wished he could remember, but it felt just about impossible.

Out of the corner of his eye he saw Yoh holding both his katana and the antiquity importantly, but after a moment, he seemed to deflate, his already weak-looking arm twitching slightly as it bled. "Um, Amidamaru," he breathed to his spirit, whose eyes were peering at him from his bluish oversoul, "do you remember how I'm supposed to do this?"

"How am _I _supposed to know that?" Amidamaru exclaimed incredulously and also, if you weren't directly involved in the situation, rather humorously.

Somehow, both _incredible _exasperation and also very slight amusement filled Ren's insides. "Baka," he chastised harshly. "Do _something!"_

"_Easy for you to say_!" Yoh shot back. "I can't remember what I'm supposed to do! Oh, Anna'll kill me if I can't remember-" He broke off, blinking.

Noticing that the blade monster still wasn't moving, Ren cast the quickest of glances at Yoh. "Well?"

"I… I remembered her name!" Yoh sounded astonished. "I actually remembered it!"

"Now's not the time to be worrying about girls!" Ren snapped, incredibly suspicious of why the blade monster wasn't moving at all. What could it be up to? "Now's the time to figure out how that crappy dagger of yours can help us!"

Yoh put a thoughtful look on his face, although it was still laced with a bit of pain that came from his wounded arm. "Hm…" He held the antiquity up to his face. "I wonder…Nah, that can't be right…"

"Figure it out already!" Ren demanded. "You're pissing me off."

Just after he said these words, there was a metallic popping sound, and Ren blinked as he realized that it was coming from the blade monster. Squinting in order to see the creature better, he heard more of the sounds and saw that the blade monster's dented skin was, well… un-denting itself back to its original luster. In surprise as well as slight fright that he would never admit, Ren's eyes widened as the blade monster held out its yet again deformed arm, letting it glow a rainbow of sparkling colors, several hues of which were unfamiliar to Ren. In mere seconds, the glowing formed a blade that extended from the creature's forearm to well past its elbow.

With an odd, metallic groaning sound, the blade monster darted forward.


	20. Nineteen

**DISCLAIMER: I don't own Shaman King. Anime would've been longer.**

_I hope I kept Ren in character. He's going to get more airtime soon :D _

_Okay, so you, dear reader, are probably going to... uh, I don't know - react strongly to the name of the next monster. I couldn't help it, I just had to do it (blame my fangirlish, insane mind); just let me tell you, story-wise, the name is absolutely COINCIDENTAL. Accidental. By chance. Seriously. Seriously._

**Nineteen**

Yoh didn't know how he had remembered how to do it. It was like how he had recalled Anna's name (although, he still couldn't quite be sure if she was his girlfriend or something else, but he was sure that he had to remember before he saw her again, if he could recognize her, lest she do something terrible to him). It had just clicked in his mind, probably spurred on by the fact that the blade monster, with its newly conjured arm sword, was charging at him and Ren.

Ignoring the sharp pain from the thin but deep hole in his arm, Yoh lifted up both weapons in his hands, and _willed _for Amidamaru to be in both the katana and the antiquity at once. There was a nearly blinding light from the new, large sword that formed, and on instinct Yoh somehow compressed the weapon into something smaller but more potent. A name for this attack echoed in his mind.

_Spirit of Sword._

By now, the blade monster was nearing the two of them, and Yoh grit his teeth against the pain in his arm, which had suddenly spiked, and he rushed forward the meet the creature, clashing his sword against his opponent's. A shudder went through his body when he _felt _as if the blade monster was scrutinizing him, even though it had no eyes. Yoh looked at the twisted upside down 'U' pipe that was the creature's head, and cold seeped into his limbs.

He forced himself to look away and focused instead upon holding his ground against the blade monster. If he could just get it to leave itself undefended for just a moment, he would be able to slash it in half. He would be able to destroy it.

Yoh was actually about to call for Ren to come and help when the navy-haired boy himself was at his side, slashing at the blade monster with his Kwan Dao. Seemingly startled at the sudden attack, the blade monster jumped back a small ways before attempting to stab at Ren with the steel sword. Expertly, Ren parried the attack, and Yoh, taking the opportunity, slashed forward with the Spirit of Sword.

As if sensing that its life was in immediate danger, the blade monster spun out of the way and ducked towards the swallowing darkness. Ren followed, but Yoh was struck with an idea and turned the other way, eyes peeled. Just barely, he saw the slightest ripple in the blackness, and he rushed toward it, raising the Spirit of Sword.

When the blade monster emerged, Yoh wasted no time in slicing downwards, straight through the creature's middle.

The blade monster seemed frozen, not moving at all. Ren came out of the blackness and just barely managed to dodge out of the way in order to avoid bumping into the monster. Quickly, he whipped around the blade monster and came to the slightly panting Yoh's side, and the two of them watched their opponent intensely.

For what felt like a long time, the creature didn't move. Yoh was afraid that it was somehow heal itself like it had done with the dents that Ren's attack had inflicted, but just as the thought crossed his mind, the blade monster very, very slowly began to fall over, its two halves parting slightly as it hit the invisible ground, where it exploded into a metallic powder that littered the ground.

Relaxing now that the blade monster was defeated, Yoh let out a breath he hadn't known that he had been holding and let go of his oversoul, returning Harusame to its sheath and pocketing the rustic antiquity before he began to walk forward.

"Wait," Ren said, extending his Kwan Dao (which hadn't been powered down) to block Yoh's path. Yoh turned his head to see that the navy-haired boy's golden eyes were still intensely trained on the pile of powder. "What if it's a trick?"

Yoh found himself chuckling. "You've never seen one of these things die, have you?" Even as he said it, Hao's face flashed behind his eyes, but he pushed it away, knowing that he had to stay focused. If his math was right, there were still two more demonic monsters to destroy before they could leave.

Ren's brows furrowed, and he frowned. "Things?" he repeated, his voice a little gone as if he were remembering something.

"Yeah," Yoh replied. "We have to defeat them in order to move on to the next world or whatever, and once we defeat the last two, we'll be able to go home and remember."

Ren's eyes sharpened and he looked to Yoh. "Remember?"

Yoh nodded. "Don't you want to go home?"

Ren looked away, lowering his Kwan Dao and letting go of his oversoul so that his spirit appeared behind him; in response to this, Amidamaru appeared as well, but both spirits kept to the background. Ren didn't answer Yoh's question as he finally walked forward and knelt down to inspect the pile of metallic powder. Yoh followed him and peered of the navy-haired boy's shoulder as Ren reached out and picked up something that hadn't dissolved along with the blade monster. After studying it for a moment, Ren finally let out a breath that both was and wasn't a sigh.

"I don't know."

()()()()()()()

The cool metal of the sword's hilt felt right under Ren's fingers. It felt powerful, like it belonged in his grasp, like it could only reach its full potential in his care. As he brought the sword closer to study it, a name popped into his mind.

_Houraiken._

Ren's sharp gaze traveled over the blade, which had somehow retracted itself into a single section of the blade, ready to whip out at a flick of the wrist. This was Ren's… this was an heirloom.

Ren honestly didn't know if he truly wanted to remember. The only things he could remember seemed dark and terrible now that he thought about it. Before, the mantras of destruction and justice seemed like a truth to him, but he had felt that twist in his stomach, the instinct that told him that those things weren't right. And now, even though he had fought against Yoh, he had fought with him as well, and the truth in the brown-haired boy's words had struck Ren deeply. What if Ren's past was filled with even _more _terrible things? What if he had actually murdered? What if he was better off _not _remembering?

He suddenly felt a hand on his shoulder, and he turned to see Yoh kneeling down beside him. The headphone-wearing boy had a melancholy, understanding smile on his face, his heavily lidded eyes calmer than Ren had ever seen them.

"I'm a little scared too," Yoh admitted.

Ren blinked in surprise, but it was quickly replaced by indignation. "Like I'd be scared," he scoffed harshly.

Yoh chuckled, infuriating Ren even more. "Well," he said, reaching forward to pluck something else from the pile of metallic ashes, "we'll just have to work hard and be brave."

Ren noticed him now fingering a slip of paper that he had pulled out of the remains of the blade monster. He saw letters that he didn't recognize, but he could somehow _read _the first character as a 'T.' "What's that?"

Yoh looked at the paper without appearing to read it. "Once you read what's on this, the world changes to the dimension of the next monster we have to defeat."

Ren let out a grunt of understanding. "So that's why everything kept changing."

Yoh nodded. "You want the honors of reading?" he asked, holding out the slip of paper.

Ren studied it, then shook his head. "You do it."

"Okay," Yoh replied. Of the words he spoke next, the first one echoed in Ren's mind, sharp with the nagging thought that he knew it from somewhere.

"'_Tao, the foe of himself.'_"

With that, the world faded away to white.

()()()()()()()

When the world became white, well, Trey sort of panicked.

"What the _hell _is going on?" he yelled, looking around wildly but seeing nothing but the whiteness. Where had the others gone? What had happened?

Trey was just about to yell out again when the color of the world started to change, shifting slowly towards grey. He hadn't realized that there hadn't been any ground under him until his feet touched what felt like smooth stone, and he stumbled a little as his weight shifted, like he had been dropped.

"I see you defeated Takeshi," came An's voice; he turned around to see that she and the others were here; she was talking to Yoh of all people.

"Takeshi?" Yoh echoed as Trey rushed over, yelling "Yoh!"

Yoh blinked as he looked up. "Oh, hey Trey. You guys all right?"

"Yup!" Trey called as he reached Yoh. "Manta's a little beat up, but-" His eyes caught something red and glistening on Yoh's arm. "Dude, what happened to you?"

Yoh blinked once more as if remembering his wound and he held out his bleeding arm; there was a puncture mark in it. "I got this when - Takeshi, you said?" He directed the question at An before turning back to Trey. "Anyway, it stabbed me, but-"

"Here." Trey untied his headband, causing his light blue hair to fall out of its spikes a little bit, and then retied it around Yoh's injury. The thought of it getting covered in blood made him a little hesitant for some reason, but Yoh needed it more than he did. He was about to ask how Yoh had defeated Takeshi when a yell interrupted him.

"It's him!"

Startled, Trey looked around to see little Manta pointing a shaking finger at that navy-haired boy that he had seen once before but never this close up, at least not that he could remember. Trey wanted to chuckle at the boy's odd pointy hairstyle, but instead he watched as Yoh hurried over.

"This is Ren," he introduced to everyone, clapping a hand onto the boy's shoulder, earning a less than amused look from Ren. After relaying everyone's names, he continued, "He helped me defeat, er… whatever its name was."

"Careful, Yoh," Chocolove warned. "That guy tried to kill me and Lyserg!"

"I still might if you annoy me too much," Ren retorted, rather calmly too.

Trey noticed that Yoh didn't seem to think that Ren's words were very helpful to the situation. "Yeah, well, Ren's cool, all right?"

"Let go of my shoulder."

Before Trey could really think about what he was doing, he was up to trouble. He put his hand on Ren's other shoulder. "Ya gonna work with us now, buddy?" he asked.

Ren threw him a distasteful look. "You have three seconds to get your hand off of my shoulder."

A little intimidated, Trey pulled his hand away, but he covered by flapping it. "Aw, I can already tell you're gonna be a party pooper."

"Did someone drop him on his head?" Ren asked as if Trey wasn't there.

Before he even finished the sentence, Trey yelled, "Hey!"

"Let's get a move on, shall we?" An asked impatiently. "Who are we looking for?"

_Little shit._ Trey was still fuming about Ren's stuck up attitude.

"We're looking for Tao," Yoh replied, holding out a slip of paper. "The enemy of himself, I think it said."

Trey noticed Ren stiffen a little at Yoh's words, but he decided to ignore it. "Well? Let's go-"

He broke off when he noticed that they were now in a large sort of courtyard, with incredibly high grey stone walls that formed a square around them, although there appeared to be no roof. There were seven different openings in the walls.

"On it," Lyserg said as soon as everyone's expecting eyes turned toward him. He dowsed quickly, and when his pendulum pointed to an opening directly across from it, he started toward it, Trey and the others following close behind.

Lyserg crossed the threshold of the opening. Trey was about to walk in after him when he walked into a solid, invisible wall.


	21. Twenty

**DISCLAIMER: Shaman King isn't mine. Only An and the monsters and the plot of this fanfic are. :P**

_Sorry I haven't updated in a while, my schedule's gottten VERY busy, and will stay busy for the next month or so (Driver's Ed as well as helping out with set for Drama (someone's gotta do the gruntwork :P)). This chapter's more filler, but at least it's something XD I think the beginning moves a little bit too quickly, but eh. Too lazy to rewrite XD Now, you guys enjoy, I gotta go do homework... after I go watch a little youtube..._

**Twenty**

If not for the loud _thunk _and the profuse swearing behind him, Lyserg might not have known that he wasn't being followed for a while at least. Confused, he turned around and saw that the others were still in that courtyard, and Trey was rubbing his nose and swearing as if he had run into something.

Lyserg walked back to them, staying inside the hallway that he had entered. "What's wrong?" he asked.

Trey was still muttering as he asked the question, but the blue-haired boy, his spikes a little untidy after giving his headband to Yoh, looked up at the dowser's question. "I ran into a friggin' wall, what else do you think?"

It was then that Lyserg realized that Trey's voice sounded slightly muffled.

Lyserg's brows furrowed. "What?" Tentatively, he stepped forward and reached out, though he moved his hand a little too quickly and it bumped somewhat painfully into some sort of invisible barrier. He furrowed his brows. "Let me try something."

He looked upwards at the incredibly high wall and shot his pendulum at the apex, hoping that the crystal would imbed in the rocks so that he could pull himself up. However, it pitifully _dinged _and bounced off. Frowning, Lyserg directed his pendulum to try and go over the wall, but it was met with another invisible wall. Disappointed, he called back his pendulum.

"Easy enough to tell what this is," Ren said, rapping the blockade with his knuckles.

"Oh, why don't you tell us, O Mighty Mister Ren?" Trey asked mockingly, turning around to face the golden-eyed boy.

Said boy eyed Trey as if he couldn't believe he was here with this idiot before he explained, as if he were talking to a child, "There are seven passages, and there are seven of us. One person per passage, if you can't count that high."

"You little-"

Ren ignored Trey's outburst and continued speaking right over him. "I'm sorry - Lyserg, was it? - but you're going to have to go on without us." He turned and began to walk away. "I'll get going now and get as far away from Blue Boy as possible."

"M-my hair's cooler than yours!" Trey spluttered, most likely unable to come up with a better comeback.

Lyserg had to hold back a chuckle at the exchange, but he knew what this was going to mean. They would all have to travel through this place, whatever it was, separately. If they came across Tao, they would have to face him by themselves.

He exchanged looks with the rest of the group as they mumbled a little bit about the situation before they split up to take a path. The dowser noticed that each of them took one last glance at the others (he didn't know if Ren did this, as he had taken a path that Lyserg could not see from this angle), as if they thought they might never see each other again. As for Lyserg, he didn't turn away until he could no longer see the others walking down the paths they had decided to take. He hadn't known the others for very long, but it just felt wrong to leave them, for each of them to walk by themselves, to face this challenge by themselves.

The dowser, however, did have Morphine. The little pixie had come out of his pendulum, and he was glad for her company as he walked down the ceiling-less hallway. The floor was made up of squares upon squares of flat stone, all of the same dark grey, and bits of deep green grass tufted up between them. The walls were also made up of the same stone used on the walkway, and the sky was thankfully a bluish grey, a little bit cheerier than the rest of the world. Not to say that Lyserg thought the stone wasn't nice, in a way, but it was all a little too uniform.

Before too long, Lyserg came to a fork, one angling to the left, the other to the right, and each one looked exactly the same. Instead of just choosing a direction at random like someone else might have, Lyserg let his pendulum descend on its wire and looked to Morphine, who smiled and very willingly integrated with the crystal. Feeding his furyoku to the medium, the crystal and wire glowed, and soon the pendulum was pointing to the path on the right. Deciding to keep his oversoul going, Lyserg kept walking along the path, keeping his eye on his medium rather than the unchanging scenery.

Suddenly, the dowser's pendulum jerked, and Lyserg's eyes narrowed as he looked up quickly to see a dashing shadowed figure at the top of the wall. Immediately realizing that this was a threat, Lyserg lifted his arm and let his pendulum fly. The shadowed figure jumped down to the ground, and for a moment Lyserg was a little afraid that whoever it was would get hurt by such a long fall, but in the next moment, something black whipped out and wrapped around the back of Lyserg's pendulum where the crystal met the wire, and pulled it taut so that Lyserg had to dig in his heels in order to avoid falling over at the force.

_Did you go the right way?_

Lyserg nearly yelped at the unfamiliar voice in his mind. He was sure that whoever had communicated with him had not spoken out loud.

"Who are you?" he called into the shadows of the wall where the black thing that held his wire led in to.

Somehow, a sigh was conveyed into his mind. _You're not who I am looking for. I will come back for you later. Do not stray off the path, _the voice finished, almost friendly.

Whatever was holding onto Lyserg's pendulum let go, and the dowser had to stagger back to regain his balance as he rewound his wire. Whatever it was that had jumped into the passageway somehow jumped back out, but still Lyserg was not able to make out what or who it was.

_Maybe it was… Tao?_

Visibly taken aback by the sudden encounter, Lyserg stood there for a moment, unsure of what to do, before he hesitatingly decided to continue on the path.

()()()()()()()

Somehow, Manta was feeling a little better. He was still sore from being squashed under everyone else, but his leg didn't hurt as much as it did anymore, and he wasn't limping. However, just because he was mostly physically all right did not mean that he was all right emotionally. In fact, if it wasn't for Mosuke floating beside him in his orangey spirit ball form, Manta was sure he would be running and screaming. This place was just plain _creepy._

Though his legs were short, Manta walked quickly, wanting to get through this place as fast as possible. He had already come past two forks, and after spending an agonizing time trying to decide which one to take on the first one, Mosuke had just huffed and gone down the left path, leaving Manta to scramble after him.

After that, Mata let Mosuke decide which way to go.

He had long since figured out that this was a maze. It was quite easy to see. What was difficult for Manta was to figure out the word _Tao_. It kept echoing in his mind. He was absolutely sure that he had heard it somewhere before, back before he came to this place. But other than that, it meant something, something in another language. He wished he could remember; he was sure it would help… Well, okay, he wasn't sure if it would help, but still, once Manta started something that had to do with knowledge, well, he _needed _to finish. It just would not be right if he gave up.

_Hmph. Well aren't you a small fry._

Startled, Manta stumbled, looking around wildly. Had that been a voice… in his mind? No, it couldn't be, it wasn't logical - but yet spirits weren't all that logical either, and he was a shaman, albeit an inexperienced one.

Mosuke, realizing that Manta wasn't following him, turned around and came back to his shaman. "Is something wrong?"

"M… Mosuke," Manta stammered. "Did… Did you say something?"

Mosuke looked and him strangely. "I just said 'Is something wrong.' Other than that, I didn't say anything at all."

_You would be very easy to defeat, a small snack after a meal. I will leave you here for now. Do not stray off the path, and keep going this way. I will be back once I challenge one of your friends._

By now, Manta was up against the right side of the stone wall, shaking. He couldn't see anyone, save for Mosuke, and his spirit ally was definitely not the one who was speaking inside his mind. The voice had disappeared now, something for which Manta was incredibly grateful, but it had left him even more scared and unsure than before. Needless to say, Manta did not like this, not even one small bit.

However, though his panic, something struck Manta. Whoever had spoken to him in his mind had inadvertently said what _Tao_ had meant: the 'way.' At least, this was what Manta remembered. It could have been different - it could have been very different, but it related to this maze, due to the fact that at least the usual expectation for a maze was to find the way out.

Maybe this analogy was not quite what the situation really was; more than likely, it could have all been a huge coincidence. But to Manta, making sense of something helped him immensely. Putting logic to something made it easier to understand, even if the logic did not quite make so much sense in afterthought, but…

"Manta?" Mosuke had not heard any of the one sided conversation in Manta's head, and he was probably incredibly confused as to what the situation was.

"There… there was a voice," Manta stammered, still shuddering from the encounter. "It must've… It must have been Tao," he managed to say.

Startled, Mosuke looked around. "Is it still here?"

Manta shook his head, tiredness coming in but also being replaced by worry for his friends. "No… Not yet. Tao is going after someone else first."


	22. Twenty One

**DISCLAIMER: Shaman King is not mine. Only this plotline of this fanfic is, and An and the monsters.**

_Sorry it took a long time to upload this... when was that? I seriously can't remember. I've been really busy (which should hopeufully end when the month does), sometimes I don't get home till 7PM and then it's dinner and homework. Plus, I got Pokemon White XD It may just be me, but if you do an image search of the Pokemon Dewott, it's hair SORT OF looks like Ren's does... sort of. XD_

_...If I'm correct in thinking, there might be only seven chapters to go. o.O Well, enjoy! (And finally, we see who Tao's looking for... as if it wasn't obvious. -.- XD)_

**Twenty-One**

_I believe that you were the one to defeat my silly brother Neko, am I wrong?_

Chocolove, completely startled and taken by surprise at the sudden voice in his head, just about fell over. Actually, he really did fall over, but he caught himself quickly and stood up, looking around. Mic appeared at his shoulder, confused, but Chocolove did not take the time to explain.

_I have been looking around, but I suppose that you would not be able to tell me where one of your other friends went. I was hoping to have a match with him. But once I am done with that, I will come after I am done with the other ones that I have already seen. I wish you farewell._

With that, the voice and the presence that went with it was gone, leaving Chocolove to continue to look around. He would not admit it, especially around Lyserg and the others, but having his mind be just about invaded made him so… so scared. Chocolove was not that stupid enough not to realize that it was the monster Tao who had communicated with him without real words, but still… He had not been expecting anything like this.

Mic let out a mewl of confusion, and Chocolove quietly explained the situation to his spirit ally, his eyes still darting around the high walled path. He was going to have to keep a strong lookout for Tao, especially now that the monster had made itself known.

"What am I thinking?" he muttered to himself as he and Mic continued on, albeit much slowly than before. "I shouldn't be worried about myself. I wonder who Tao is looking for…"

()()()()()()

Ren padded along the stone walkway through the maze, his footsteps silent as he kept his eyes peeled. While the sky was a rather bright bluish grey, the high walls provided what must have been a permanent shadow that was especially darker in the corners and where the wall met the ground. Bason floated along in his spirit ball form alongside his master, ready for whatever might happen.

Ren knew that there was someone - or some_thing _- watching him. He could feel a gaze on the back of his neck that could very well have been generating its own heat. He knew it had to be that monster, that demon, with the familiar name: Tao.

However, Ren did not turn around to look. Tao would not let Ren see it anyway. Ren was sure that Tao knew that the golden-eyed boy was aware of his presence, but Ren had not oversouled Bason into Houraiken yet (his Kwan Dao was collapsible, and since he did not have a big enough pocket to put the weapon in, he had torn off part of a pant leg and had used it to tie it securely to his back).

Instead, Ren held Houraiken in his right hand, the sword ready to extend to its full length at the flick of his wrist. He was not going to make the first move here, especially since he did not know where Tao was. As an alternative, he was going to wait Tao out so that his opponent would make the first move.

While Ren was incredibly observant of his surroundings, he was so focused on Tao that he was almost surprised when he came to a three way fork in the path. He blinked his golden eyes at the new predicament. He had come to forks in this maze before, but there had always been just two paths, and his gut instinct had always guided him. But here, here he stopped short, unsure.

Ren's skin prickled and the hair on the back of his neck stood on end when he heard a chuckle reverberate, not through the air, but in his mind. _Tough choice, is it not? Go left, stay straight, or head right. It is quite the problem._

"Tao," Ren growled, flicking Houraiken so that it extended to its impressive full length. He cast his golden eyes about every which way. "Show yourself," he demanded.

The chuckle came again. _I am not an idiot. You should understand this, for you are a Tao yourself, albeit different from how I am myself._

Ren almost balked as he absorbed the confusing information. "What do you mean?" he snapped, continuing to scour the surrounding area with his eyes.

_I read your memories before _she _could get a hold of them, _Tao went on. _The Taos were what made you strong, as well as wronged. They gave you your Kwan Dao, and Houraiken as well - which my dear brother Takeshi plundered from you, the greedy fool. Houraiken is quite the heirloom. Who knows how many have been slain by its blade?_

Ren did his best to ignore Tao's sideways taunts; he could not let the monster goad him on. Tao probably was not even saying anything close to the truth. Why believe him anyway? Tao was the enemy.

The foe of himself.

What did that mean? Ren had not really thought about it before. What did it mean to be the foe of yourself? Maybe he would be able to understand Tao better if he could remember why the word _Tao _itself made him feel… weird, for the lack of a better word.

As if Tao could read his mind - and Ren really hoped that this was not the case - the demon continued. _I can hear the gears in your brain working, young Tao._

Ren whipped around, but saw only the stone path behind him. "Why do you keep calling me that?" he snapped. "It's annoying."

_Tao Ren-kun_, the demon communicated, somehow _sounding _slimy. The telepathic voice seemed to be coming from the other direction now, and Ren turned to face the three way fork.

Three dark figures stood in the center of each pathway. Even though Ren's golden eyes were exceptionally sharp, he could not truly make out their forms, although they all appeared to be humanoid and at least partly identical.

Ren's eyes were wide at what Tao had communicated. "What…"

_Did I call you? _Tao finished for him, and Ren got a very good idea that the demon was smug. _Tao Ren-kun. It _is _your name, after all. _Tao mentally chortled again, sounding extremely self satisfied.

Ren wanted to banish the demon from his thoughts. He wanted it to leave forever. He was not sure what it was up to, but Ren _knew _that it was telling him the truth about his family name. Not because the demon's mental voice rang with truth and sincerity, but because of… well, Ren was not sure. But Tao _was _his family name, he could _feel it. _How this Tao, this odd, twisted demon, shared his name, Ren also did not know, but it did not truly matter, did it? Ren had the feeling that this was some sort of coincidence that Tao was using to his advantage so that he could try to hold power over Ren.

Ren thought about his family name, but because of the situation at hand, he could only think of it briefly. What did it mean to be a Tao? Did it have to do with people dying, of false tales of destruction and justice? Ren wanted to know, but he also was afraid to know (not that he would admit this to anyone). He was afraid to know if he had been a terrible person.

A murderer.

_You have three choices, Tao Ren-kun. _Tao went on to repeat what he had said earlier. _Go left, stay straight, or head right. One of us will let you pass, the other will kill you on the spot, and the last will challenge you to a match, but you will not know which one of us will do what until you try to get past us._

Ren scrutinized the trio of opponents. They were all hazy, and it was impossible to truly make them out, but it seemed that they were all holding just one weapon. Though he had not truly made up his mind yet, Ren oversouled Bason into Houraiken, causing the sword to glow gold with power.

Both he and Tao stayed silent as Ren weighed the options in his mind. There was no way to know which path would get him which option, and there was probably no way in hell that Tao was telling him the truth. For all he knew, if he took one step, he would be attacked. Ren knew that he was a great fighter, but he was not stupid enough to be cocky in this situation. If he was attacked by all three opponents - whose strengths he did not know - he might not have a good chance to get out of the coming battle without serious injury, at the very least.

As he peered through narrowed eyes at the dark trio, Ren suddenly knew what he was going to do.

"I am my own person." As he said this, Ren was one hundred percent sure that he had said the words before, and although they were good words, saying them twice felt very redundant, but he kept going. "I am my own person, and I am not going to let _you_ of all things give me my choices. I make them myself."

He pointed his sword Houraiken at the dark figure in the middle. "And my choice is to challenge you, Tao. A fight to our end."

Even though he had barely known the others for five minutes before they had to leave each other in this place, he knew that he would lay his life on the line for any of them, even, dare he think it, that bastard Trey. He wished he understood why, but right now, it did not matter, not one small bit.

Ren heard a snicker in his mind and the trio in front of him vanished. Immediately, Ren whipped around, holding Houraiken aloft towards the figure that stood ten feet away from him.

As soon as he saw Tao, Ren knew why the demon was 'the foe of himself.' He understood what the monster's ability was, other than the telepathic communication: the power to copy.

For Ren was looking at a completely shadowed, red-eyed mirror of himself.


	23. Twenty Two

**DISCLAIMER: I don't own Shaman King. *too tired to put in witty remark***

_Lot's of italics :D Who doesn't love those? Anyways, big battle, lots of dialogue, too. This chapter (or the next) marks the beginning of the end: onlly 6 chaps left, if I remember correctly. And this one is all about my Lenny... -er, Ren. No one owns Ren, besides Hiroyuki Takei... (Jeezum that sounded weird XD)_

_Not much to say. I'm dedicating this chapter to all the tsunami victims and survivors in Japan. Perseverance: it's hard to do, but it gets you through. I believe this applies to everything. :3_

**Twenty-Two**

Tao smirked, but he still spoke with his telepathy into Ren's mind. _I am very glad that you were smart enough to realize my intentions of battling you like this, just one on one. You are the only one out of you and your friends…other than that female - to have not killed one of my siblings. I would like to avenge them, but even if you do defeat me, well, I would still win against someone, in a sense, if you prove to be strong enough._

Ren furrowed his brow. "What are you talking about?"

Tao chuckled, his features, identical to Ren's but as dark as a shadow with shining red eyes, were hard edged but conveying amusement. _My siblings and I have lived eons. It was only a matter of time before one of us became a little too greedy over our shared territory and prey. _He lifted his own black blade, a mirror to Ren's Houraiken. It was glowing, although it was not golden with oversoul, it was red with something more… sinister, but also… something else that Ren could not place. _My sister is the strongest of us, the eldest, and she was the one to betray us. If you destroy me here, it will be to her world that you will go to next. I will warn you now; she can not be taken down by just one person, like I may prove to be. She was the one who lured you and your friends here in the first place._

Ren narrowed his eyes. "Are you telling me the truth?"

Tao let out an actual laugh that escaped his lips. It was not full of threatening or wickedness, but actual joy, as if he had not laughed in a long time. The only thing, however, was that his voice was incredibly unnatural and broke in several places, and Ren could understand why the demon chose to communicate telepathically and not verbally.

_There is no need to lie to you, Tao Ren-kun_, the demon explained once he was done laughing. He did not say Ren's name with any of the implied ill will like he had done before. He sounded… friendly and open, like his outward appearance (the darkness of it, not the fact that it was a copy of Ren) was one thing and he himself another. _I will even tell you now that our names are nothing but a coincidence, and I love coincidences - they give me more leverage with my prey - although I do believe that you are of a definite higher level than just any creature. But understand that I cannot tell you everything. Some secrets are best kept quiet, after all. However, _he continued, crouching into a ready stance, _I will tell you what you need to know if I think that you are worthy. Are you ready?_

Without waiting for Ren to respond, Tao rushed forward, pushing his dark blade forward to stab. Ren parried the blow with his own Houraiken, and then kicked Tao in the chest, sending the demon flying backward. For a moment, Ren thought that Tao would be unbalanced, but the dark demon flipped backwards onto his hands and pushed himself in a handspring so that he could land back on his feet.

_Sister Kasumi was capable of drowning you, of suffocating you with the mere pressure of water, but she was slow and susceptible to the slightest molecular change, _Tao communicated as he twirled his dark blade once, seemingly to get a feel for it, and then held it by the hilt. _Sister Yuuna could strangle you in mere seconds if she wanted to, but she was weak on the inside. _As this, Tao rushed forward again, but as Ren prepared to either strike or parry another blow, the demon easily jumped over him, and Ren had to turn and block the attack with the broad side of Houraiken in order to keep from being speared.

_Brother Daichi was immensely strong, slow though quick to strike, but he had a slow mind and one very large weak point. _At this point, Ren and Tao were struggling to gain the upper hand, trapped in a deadlock with their swords. _Brother Neko could paralyze you and easily kill you, but like a silly little cat, he liked to play with his food._ Tao, with an incredible strength that Ren had not anticipated, pushed the golden-eyed boy back.

Ren stumbled slightly, but when red eyes flashed as Tao hurried towards him to swipe as if to decapitate, Ren ducked forward and made to stab, but his opponent had already dodged a fair distance away in order to avoid injury. Ren stood up straight and backed away slightly, sure that Tao was holding out on him. The demon wanted to convey a message to him, but Tao did not want to just give him a straight answer. Tao wanted Ren to earn the answer.

Before Tao continued, he began to creep sideways, and Ren did as well, so that the two mirrors of each other, one dark, one light, slowly circled each other. _My last brother, Takeshi, was incredibly difficult to get along with. He was silent and purely instinctual, not having any true intelligence like me - only Daichi was the other one who did not speak, usually, but he could carry a conversation. But in any case, Takeshi was instinctual and quick to strike, but he was felled by your companion when he underestimated his opponent._

Here, Tao darted forward, and Ren prepared to rush in as well, but all the demon had done was a feint; instead of attack in the way that Ren had predicted, Tao spun around to the golden-eyed boy's side and sliced outward, his dark blade accentuated by its heatless red flame. Ren jumped in order to avoid the slash, but he hissed slightly as the tip of Tao's blade grazed his bicep. Quickly, Tao rushed after him, and Ren lifted Houraiken to defend himself, but his opponent forcefully battered into the blade so that Ren had to tighten his grip on his sword in order to keep it from being knocked out of his hand.

_Think, Tao Ren-kun!_ the demon mentally demanded as he took the opportunity and pushed Ren into the wall, holding him by the throat with a black hand, forcing Ren to stare into his mirrored, but red, eyes. There had been no opportunity for Ren to look at his reflection in this place, but he knew exactly what he looked like, and Tao, though completely black with glowing crimson eyes, was his exact copy. It unnerved Ren to see this doppelganger with such an intense look, but he refused to look away, he refused to be intimidated here.

_Think! _Tao repeated. _Tao Ren-kun, each of my siblings has a weakness, and so do I. What is my weakness? What makes me susceptible to defeat? With my sister, the last opponent, you must think fast, you must study her every move, her every action. Tao Ren-kun, what are your thoughts about me, about how I act, how I fight? Think!_

Ren wanted to shout in this demon's face that he could not think with so much screaming in his mind, but just when he was about to, a realization struck him. He was not just about to yell into Tao's face, but into _his _face as well. Ren wasn't being held against the wall by Tao's hand, but by his own _copied _hand.

Filled with a new sense of vigor, Ren used one leg to forcibly kick Tao away. While the demon stumbled and tried to regain his balance, Ren hopped into the air and pushed off against the wall, sailing over Tao before he landed nimbly on the ground. Quickly, before he could accidentally give the demon a chance to dodge, Ren whipped around toward Tao and plunged Houraiken into the ground through the solid stone of the pathway, and he fed an incredible amount of furyoku into his medium.

Instantly, with many cracks that reverberated through the high walled pathway, scores of different weapons stuck up out of the ground in a straight line towards Tao. The demon's red eyes widened, but he did not even try to dodge before the swords and spears pierced him through his legs and torso.

Ren let out a breath that he had not known that he had been holding and pulled Houraiken out of the ground, cutting off his furyoku to the sword and thus deactivating his oversoul. Bason appeared just behind him as he walked over the now hole-filled ground towards the fatally injured Tao, who was bleeding black blood that let off a reddish mist.

"You might have been my copy," Ren stated as he stopped about a foot away from his opponent, "but you had not seen me attack with actual oversoul. You can't copy what you have not seen in person, regardless of what you may have seen of my memories."

Tao smiled through the pain. _I wish that I could have gone full out against you, Tao Ren-kun, but I did not really want to injure you too much. Though in normal circumstances you and your friends would have been a nice meal, I would much rather die like I am doing now rather than have my sister get away with her betrayal._

Ren watched as his mirror began to deform as Tao lost strength. Ren could not truly describe what was happening, but the extremities of Tao began to somehow pull back into his main torso, although his head still remained. For the last time, Ren's golden eyes met Tao's red ones.

_One last word of advice, _the demon offered. _My sister loves to be deceitful._

With that, Tao's body dissolved into a sooty black dust.

Ren studied the remains for a moment and decided the push aside the questions that Tao had brought up about him - such as what the family of Tao truly was - and to focus instead upon getting out of here, to focus on defeating the demon Tao's sister.

And so, instead of focusing on himself, Ren knelt down and fingered through Tao's silky remains until he pulled out the final slip of parchment. He stood up, and before the world in this dimension changed for the final time, before the final battle against the final demon, Ren read the slip of paper aloud to himself and Bason, the only two to hear the final message for the first time.

"'_The final monster shall send you home.'"_


	24. Twenty Three

**DISCLAIMER: I don't own Shaman King, only my own OCs and this particular plotline.**

_Shortish chapter. Not too much to say here - I should do my homework, since I'm getting my teeth pulled tomorrow and I'm not sure whether or not I'll have the mental tolerance to do it. :P Darn. Anyways, I hope you all will enjoy - we finally meet the last monster. Five chapters left._

**Twenty-Three**

Yoh's sandals made a relatively soft _clip clop _sound against the stone pathway, but in the silence the small sound echoed throughout the high walled pathway he was following. He had come across two forks already, but nothing else at all. Yoh had begun to feel a lot better and less depressed about killing Hao after he and Ren had essentially become friends (although Yoh had a pretty good idea that Ren would deny this; besides, they had not known each other for long, and least in this place). However, this did not mean that Yoh was completely over the terrifying memory of taking his twin's life, but he was doing his best not to think about that right now; he would leave it for when he got back home with Anna, when he had all of his memories in tact, if what An hold told him was really the truth.

"Think we'll be back soon, Amidamaru?" Yoh asked his spirit ally, trying to take his mind off of the slightly gloomy atmosphere.

Amidamaru, who was floating beside his master in his humanoid form, seemed a little surprised at the sudden conversation, but he got over it quickly and shrugged slightly. "I would not know…"

But even as the spirit said these words, the walls around him and Yoh suddenly began to fade. The ground below Yoh's feet vanished as well, and the brown-haired shaman felt himself being suspended in midair before the ground reappeared, and he stumbled a little as he had to rely once again on his own balance. Once Yoh was steady, he took a look at his surroundings.

The brown-haired shaman was standing on an endless expanse of red dirt that was a little bit springy underfoot, like clay. The horizon was miles distant and hazy as it met the equally red sky, the only difference being was the sky was slightly brighter. But other than the redness of the world of the last monster, there was not much else to see. Except, however, for other people.

"Yoh!" This was Manta, who was quickly hurrying toward the aforementioned brown-haired shaman as quickly as his short legs could carry him. Yoh visibly brightened at the sight of the short boy, but he could not just be content without knowing what had happened to the others while they were in the maze.

He gave a wave to Manta and turned his head around to look, and the first person that he noticed was Trey, his blue hair making a contrast against the red scenery; the jacketed boy was looking around before he caught sight of Yoh and waved before rushing over, managing to reach the brown-haired shaman just a second before Manta.

"Did you defeat whatever it was that we were looking for?" Trey asked Yoh.

As Yoh shook his head, Manta said, "I _heard _Tao, in my head. He said that I wasn't who he was looking for, and he left." The short boy looked around. "I can see the others, so I don't think that Tao… got any of us."

"I heard Tao too," Chocolove said, coming up to them. "The guy was so weird… He was in my head."

Lyserg ran up. "I saw Tao, but I couldn't make him out that well. It looked like he was in shadow."

"So which one of us defeated him?" An asked, walking up with her arms folded and looking rather impatient to get the last monster destroyed.

"I did, _An_."

Yoh and the others turned toward the newcomer Ren. The golden-eyed boy had a cut on his left arm, and although it was shallow, his arm was shiny and wet with blood that dripped onto the already red ground. Yoh noted that he had tied his Kwan Dao to his back with a bit of cloth from the bottom of his dark pants, but he had not taken the time to make himself a tourniquet. Instead, Ren griped his sword tightly in his right hand, so hard that his knuckles seemed white.

While Yoh noticed the obvious hostility in Ren's demeanor, others did not. "Well, who're we looking for now?" Trey asked, oblivious.

Ren gave him a pointed look full of loathing. "There was no name on the paper, no hints. Just the fact that this one will be able to send us home. However…" He trailed off for a moment, turning his golden eyes from Trey to someone else. "I have a pretty good guess at who we're looking for."

Suddenly, Ren integrated his spirit ally into his sword and stabbed the ground with it, and a barrage many different deadly weapons sprang up out of the ground in a line. Startled, everyone jumped away from the attack, Trey with a small girly shriek.

"What was that for?" the blue-haired boy yelled, glaring daggers at Ren.

Calmly, Ren pulled his sword out of the ground, causing the weapons to disappear, leaving nothing but holes in the ground. He did not even look at Trey and the others and instead kept his eyes trained on someone who was hidden from Yoh's view by Chocolove's head.

"I know that I haven't been here for too long," Ren said, referring to the group, his voice incredibly accusatory. "But I believe that I wouldn't be wrong in saying that An knows far too much about this place for someone who has had at least most of her memory wiped like the rest of us, even, from what she's told me before, if she's been here longer than us. As another thing, she isn't a shaman, not like the rest of us. And if Tao told me one thing true, it's that the last monster we have to face is a master of deceit."

"What nonsense are you spewing?" An asked as Yoh moved around Chocolove to see her reaction. She had her arms crossed and was looking at Ren with contempt. "Are you saying that _I'm_-"

"Yes, actually," Ren interrupted, pointing his sword straight at the girl. "I am."

"Wait a second," Chocolove called, taking a few steps forward. "I don't understand. She's helped us with those other monsters. Why would she do that if she was one of them herself?"

Ren did not stop looking at An with narrowed golden eyes. "Because she betrayed them somehow. Because she was tired of them, of sharing territory and food with them. Because she was greedy."

An glared back at him, but did not say anything to defend herself.

Ren went on. "All those monsters could have easily defeated us, but they knew that they couldn't take An out by themselves, so they let us live so that we could kill her. Why they attacked in the first place was probably because, since An is such a master of deceit, they didn't know if we could have been her or not."

"How did you figure this out?" Lyserg asked, his tone suspicious. "For all we know, _you _could be trying to make it seem as if you're the good guy when you're really the last monster. You have tried to kill me and Chocolove before."

"And me," Manta added in a small voice, so low that Yoh was not quite sure if he had really heard it.

"Lyserg does have a point," Trey vouched, although Yoh thought that the blue-haired boy did not sound too convincing, as if he was not sure of what he was saying. "You've barely been with the rest of us for five minutes and you're accusing others of basically being evil."

Ren flicked his eyes over to the main ground, although he did not lower his sword. "That's true," he admitted. "There is no reason for you to trust me. But there is also no reason for you to trust her. I could very well be wrong, but I don't believe that I am. I believe that I am right, and so far An has not said anything to defend herself. Tao, the last monster, explained a few things to me, and while he didn't mention the last monster's name, he revealed that it was a female and loved to be deceitful. For all you know, I could very well be the last monster in disguise, but even though no one was with me to hear Tao's words, I at least have a valid argument at the ready, at least one that _wasn't _thought up beforehand."

"Maybe we should try to talk about this calmly," Yoh suggested. He, for one, was not exactly happy about Ren's accusation, but he had to admit, Ren had a good point. However, he did not want an all-out brawl to ensue here, especially before everyone was certain about the truth.

A sudden, high-pitched laugh of derisive amusement followed his words, and Yoh looked, eyes wide, to see An chortling away.

"You're very clever, Ren," she admitted, tapping the side of her jaw with one finger and looking at the golden-eyed boy with praise in her green eyes. "Eventually, you would have probably convinced them all, but I just had to intervene. I'm starving you see, but I couldn't attack earlier because I needed all of your help to defeat my siblings, the nasty little nuisances that they were. I also see that Tao tried to enlighten you about our little situation, but he should have left these matters to family. You all are pretty persistent," she added, glancing at Yoh and the others. "Originally, I came into your world just to try to get a few snacks to take back home, and lo and behold, you all came in after me after I took your precious pet, who I got separated from on the journey back here. I'll tell you now, you all gave me quite the weapons to help me kill my siblings: yourselves."

Before anyone, not even Yoh or Ren, could react, An dashed with absolute inhuman speed towards Yoh and the others, cutting through the group before returning back to her original spot.

"I'll get to you all in a minute," she said with an air of polite but evil aura. "But seeing as I originally brought him here first, I'll attend to him, and then I'll kill you all as well."

With that, An's arm morphed into something resembling a dagger as she held it to Manta's throat.


	25. Twenty Four

**DISCLAIMER: Shaman King is not mine, I only own An, the other monsters, and the plotline. :3**

_I hope y'all enjoy this chapter: it kind of made me afraid of it when I realized what I had written for the fight scenes. I mean, there's a lot of blood. o.o And violence. o.o Not that there wasn't before, but still. o.o _

_Anyway, after this, only four more chapters. :( Sad face! I really don't want to upload this entire thing, it'll make the ending so final XD But of course, I wouldn't tortue you, ze reader, like that. Not intentionally... XD Enjoy!_

**Twenty-Four**

Manta was not sure at all of how he had gotten into this situation. One moment, he had been standing just behind Yoh, and the next, An had him clutched in her strong, cruel arms, her hand inexplicably formed into a dagger. Manta stared at it, unable to comprehend how he could be in such a situation so quickly. He wanted to panic, and panicking would be the easiest thing to do in this situation - for what could he _do _here? - but he also knew that panicking would do nothing to help. There were only two ways this could play out: he could somehow survive, or he could be killed. And the second option was looking a whole lot more likely at the moment.

"I guess I overestimated you all," An said, her voice right next to Manta's ear so that it rang almost painfully in his head. "I honestly thought that you might have figured me out already. I thought you all were smarter than this. Well, you definitely would have been, if human memories weren't mostly wiped in this place. Quite the shame; it would have been a nice change to have my prey be able to fight back at the level that they knew in the other world, a good challenge. But I can deal with this; after all, you did help me slaughter my siblings, so all's well that ends well."

With that, An's hand dagger glinted in the red light cast by the sky, and Manta squeezed his eyes shut in a last desperate, pitiful act to stay alive and also so that he would not have to see it plunge into his throat.

However, it never did; or, at least, Manta never felt it slice him.

Incredibly scared but also incredibly curious as to why nothing was happening, Manta peeked one eye open to see that, directly in front of his face, there was a shining, glowing crystal that was attached to a wire. It was wrapped around An's wrist and was pulling her arm away from Manta's neck.

Just one moment later, something - actually, some_one_, that someone being Chocolove - whizzed past Manta and tackled An, and another person, this time Trey riding atop his snowboard, zipped in and plucked Manta up with one hand before zooming away a respectable distance. The blue-haired boy put the short one down on the ground only somewhat carefully.

"Better pull out Mosuke," Trey suggested, turning back toward the battle.

Manta, trembling a little from the almost fatal encounter as well as from a sudden rush of adrenaline, nodded. Mosuke appeared at his side in his spirit ball form, and quickly Manta fumbled to whip out his laptop from his backpack and integrated his spirit ally into it to create his hammer. Even as he held the weapon, though, Manta felt his spiritual energy drain slightly, and he knew that he would not be the best person to help with this battle.

But, so help him, he would try.

()()()()()()()

Chocolove held up one of his shaft claws, his oversoul glowing as he prepared to strike An. Chocolove had not expected that he would ever be in this situation, where he had to kill someone whom he had had a _sort of _acquaintanceship with, but this was the monster, the thing they had to defeat to go home. This was the thing that had tried to _kill _Manta, and the thing that would have killed them all too.

For the sake of everyone else, he could not let An live, not that it would be such a hard thing for him to kill her here, after what he had just learned from both her and Ren.

But, just before Chocolove was about to thrust his shaft claw into An's throat, he gasped and jumped up.

He could not explain how it had happened, nor could he explained why it had brought on such a reaction from him, but it did. Instead of being about to almost kill An, Chocolove had been about to rip out the throat of an old man.

Said old man was looking up at him with scared eyes, but in less than a second, they had narrowed and hardened, and with surprising nimbleness, the old man sprang to his feet and knocked Chocolove to the ground.

Chocolove, his head hurting where he had struck it on the red ground, looked up to see the old man suddenly morph back into An.

()()()()()()()

Ren rushed at An with his oversoul powered Houraiken, but as he swung at her dark-haired head, she expertly ducked under his attack without even having to look at him and dodged behind him. Knowing that he would have to be careful in order to avoid stepping on the fallen Chocolove (not because he wanted to go out of his way to make sure that Chocolove was comfortable, but because if he did step on Chocolove it might cause him to stumble), Ren whipped around, ready to attack-

Only to find himself staring at an incredibly tall girl with blue eyes and dark green hair.

Ren blinked his golden eyes, unable to figure out how it was possible that he was looking at this person who was so familiar to him. How had she gotten here?

"N-nee-san?" he breathed, struck by the sudden realization that this was the perfect image of what he could just barely remember as his sister. However, even as he said the words, he knew that this was not his older sister, no matter how much it looked like her. This was An, trying to trick him.

But it was too late. Before Ren could retaliate, An, in this impossible copy of his sister, formed her arm into a giant block and struck Ren broadside the head, knocking him to the ground and causing his vision to flicker painfully for a moment.

He had to get up… No matter what An looked like, he had to get up and fight her…

"Watch out!"

Startled to the point where the pain in his head almost went away, Ren scrambled to his feet and rushed a few feet away as fast as he could. Gripping Houraiken tightly, Ren turned once again to see that Trey, Yoh, Lyserg, and even Manta had rushed up to cover him, surrounding the still green-haired An.

The girl smirked and whipped out talismans, tossing them into the air so that they flew at blinding speeds around all the boys, cutting at their skin. Ren had to hold up Houraiken in order to protect his face from the projectiles, and because of his already throbbing head, he could not figure out how he could stop this.

()()()()()()

The talismans whipped around Lyserg, cutting at his skin and drawing blood. The dowser covered most of his face with his arms to protect his eyes, which were narrowed as he scrutinized An's grinning green-haired form.

Taking action, Lyserg _willed _his pendulum to dart out and wrap around her form. Even though the dowser had essentially immobilized her, the talismans did not stop cutting at his skin and clothes. Lyserg blinked, about to will his dowsing medium to crush her, but when he looked again, it was not the green-haired An that he had in his wire's clutches. Instead, it was a silver-haired maiden with deep rose red eyes that seemed to stare into Lyserg's soul.

His green eyes widened. "J-Jeanne-sama…"

Startled that he would ever attack the Iron Maiden, the dowser let his wire fall from around her body, and he also let his arms fall from his face and gave up his resistance against the razor sharp talismans, ashamed of what he had done.

Even though the talismans still flew, Jeanne's arm shaped into what resembled a two pronged pitchfork, and she launched herself at Lyserg like a hell bent demon, knocking him to the ground. She plunged the two prongs of her arm into the ground on either side of the dowser's neck, a twisted smile on her face, her red eyes filled with bloodlust.

Lyserg wished that she would just get it over with. He had done a terrible thing in attacking the Iron Maiden, even if he had not intended to. The dowser had been attacking An, after all, not her, not Jeanne. However, even though he was scared as well as ashamed of himself, he would not close his eyes in preparation for the end.

And thus, he was forced to watch, horrified, as Trey knocked Jeanne away with an icicle that was attached to the bottom of his snowboard. When they were both out of his sight, Lyserg sprang to his feet, barely even registering that the talismans had faded away, and looked to see Trey hovering a few feet off the ground, looking down at Jeanne on the ground, unnaturally dark red blood pouring out of a wound on her side.

Lyserg, sickened and enraged, was about to unleash all of his fury upon Trey when Jeanne _changed to the form of a young girl with long blue hair and pained eyes, blood still coming from her and staining the ground. _

"_Onii-chan…"_

_Realizing that the Jeanne which he had attacked, that the Jeanne which had attacked him was not real, Lyserg took a step backward, shocked. He had seen An change from her first form to that of an old man, and of course that of the green-haired girl, but he had not known that the imitation of Jeanne would bring out such a reaction in him._

_He watched as Trey's snowboard fell to the ground along with him in surprise, and the blue-haired boy used his arms to back up in such a way that allowed the dowser to see his wide ebony eyes._

"_You're… I… I can't remember you…," Trey stuttered._

_The blue-haired An grinned, her eyes and everything else about her becoming catlike as she pounced at Trey, digging claws into his chest before jumping off, blood dripping from her fingertips, as she landed nimbly to the ground several feet away, turning back around to glare at Yoh. Her side was still bleeding profusely, but it did not seem to bother her all that much._

"_Remember me, Yoh?" An taunted, her voice changing as she suddenly became a blonde, clad in a short black dress and sandals with a red scarf tied around her head, a blue beaded necklace around her neck._

_The dowser could hear the disbelief in Yoh's voice. "A-Anna?"_

_Calmly yet sinisterly, the An-Anna pulled off her beads and held them at arm's length, the blood on her hand dripping down over the blue._


	26. Twenty Five

**DISCLAIMER: I don't own Shaman King, only An, and the monsters.**

_I think what scared me most about last chapter was Jeanne. o.o Imagine, the uber-religious, must-kill-Hao, I'm-obviously-doing-the-right-thing X-Laws leader becoming bloodthirsty. o.o Scary. Something must be wrong with me if I managed to come up with that... Though actually, if I could draw really well, a demonlike-Jeanne would be a neat pic - her eyes ARE already red..._

_Not much to say here. Bits of YohxAnna, An gets ugly, and, as usual, people get hurt._

**Twenty-Five**

"She's just trying to trick us," Ren hissed, sounding as if he were speaking through some enormous pain. "This isn't who you think it is."

Yoh's mouth was agape. It… It was Anna! He could not attack Anna, he could never do that, not even if she was trying to kill him! If you asked him right now, he would not be able to explain why this was, for he had barely any recollection of the blonde girl at all, but even if he harmed her in the slightest way possible, he would regret it for all eternity.

But… he had seen her change her form into other people. Anna could not do that… could she? Yoh just could not remember the details, but he knew that he could not hurt Anna… But surely this could not be her, this should have been An, with such unnaturally dark blood spilling out of her side and down onto the ground, with Trey's blood dripping from her fingers onto her blue itako beads…

"Yoh," she said, barely moving her mouth. A sudden dry wind sprang up and tossed her short blonde hair and her headscarf; she sounded distant but enticing, as if she were calling him from a long ways away. Her black eyes were unreadable. "Remember, Yoh? All these people are your enemies. They are holding you back from your dream; from _our _dream."

Startled and confused, Yoh took a step backwards. How could Anna be doing this? How could she be saying such things, things that seemed so familiar, but things he could not remember? The way she was saying them… it sounded _wrong_. What was his dream, anyway? How could Manta, Ren, Lyserg, Chocolove, or Trey keep him from it? It just did not sound right, not at all.

This was not Anna, this was An, and he and the others had to do their best to kill her so that they could get back home. But even if it _was _An, Yoh did not know how he could harm even the imitation of Anna. He could hardly even _remember _Anna, but from what he did know, it sounded as if Anna was a no nonsense, _get your ass moving and take out the trash _kind of girl, but he… he loved her.

The Anna imitation, as if she could read Yoh's mind, jangled her blue beads so that the blood that had transferred to the necklace from her fingers splattered gracefully onto the ground. "Yoh," she called.

Before she could say any more, however, Chocolove sped around Yoh and towards the Anna imitation, who smirked and whipped her necklace out at exactly the right time so that the blue beads wrapped around Chocolove's neck. The afro-headed boy let out a gargling, strangled sound of surprise as he fell to the ground and clutched at the necklace to try and keep himself from being strangled to death.

Yoh, before he really realized what he was doing, rushed in and sliced at the necklace with his white Spirit of Sword. In what could have been called an explosion of blue beads, the necklace broke apart, freeing Chocolove, who gasped and felt at his throat as Yoh hauled him to his feet. After making sure that Chocolove was all right, Yoh turned hard ebony eyes on the imitation of Anna, who smirked darkly.

Lyserg's pendulum shot out of nowhere, but the sharp eyes of Anna's imitation quickly caught the glint of the crystal and she jumped into the air, her body morphing to become catlike while still maintaining Anna's main features. Nimbly and almost as quickly as Lyserg's pendulum, she landed on the spiritually infused taut wire and ran along it on all fours past Yoh and towards the dowser. Startled and trying to follow the action, Yoh whipped around to see Lyserg, green eyes wide, force his wire to try and tangle around An's now catty impersonation of Anna, but the monster was too quick and jumped to the ground, keeping her pace as she rocketed toward the green-haired boy.

But, just at the last possible second, a large hammer shot out and smacked the monster straight in the head, sending her twirling head over heels backward before she managed to land, a little clumsily, on all fours. She shook her head much like an animal would, as if to clear it, and glared, the ebony eyes copied from Anna morphing to a dangerous red.

And they looked straight at Manta, whose own eyes were flickering from her to his oversouled hammer as if he were horror-stricken at what he had done.

With an inhuman screech of rage, An began to lose her hold on the imitation of Anna, becoming a ragged blonde with red eyes, her skin covered in patches of an ugly, rash-like red, and her body became more catlike in muscularity than ever as she rushed forward, claws extending from her hands as blood spurted from her earlier wound, leaving a grim trail on the ground.

Acting on absolute, one-hundred-percent instinct, Yoh hurried forward, and, knowing that he did not have the time to pull up his Spirit of Sword to defend himself, took the brunt of An's attack with his right shoulder.

The pain that came next was unimaginably worse than the puncture that Takeshi had left him with. Five deep claw marks had ripped at his shirt and sunk deep into his flesh, almost scraping the bone. The attack had left him with ragged claw marks that penetrated his muscle, leaving him unable to move his arm to its full and usual capabilities.

Hissing a wordless threat of rage, An reared up on her legs and swiped at him again, this time with her other hand, and Yoh heard multiple screams of his name as he feel to the ground in agony, blood pooling onto the ground below him.

()()()()()()

Trey stared numbly at Yoh's body, his brain unable to fully comprehend what had just happened. First, An had somehow changed into that girl that Trey both knew and did not know, and now she had become this… cat demon and almost killed Yoh, right in front of Trey and everyone else.

Trey was in bad shape. Granted, not as bad as Yoh probably was right now, but still. The blue-haired boy was having trouble breathing - perhaps An had somehow cracked a rib? - and even though her claws had not sunk deep enough into his chest to have punctured any sort of organ other than his skin, he was oozing blood from that area. On top of his physical injuries, he was also in a sort of mental trauma of confusion. Trey had taken out that water demon - Kasumi - and had helped to defeat most of the other monsters, but An was on another level completely.

In fact, the now catlike monster was screeching, lifting a clawed hand as if to strike down and tear out Yoh's throat. At the sight of this, Trey reacted instantly, and, without thinking, he dashed forward on his snowboard and rammed into An, his momentum making him and her tumble over and over across the dusty red dirt.

Those few seconds of life were terrible. The only thing to look at was An's intense, evil red eyes that were wide with hatred and surprise. Trey wanted desperately to close his eyes and block out the terrible, horrific sight that was her eyes, but could very well be inviting her to stab him in the stomach, and even though barreling into her could have been considered a suicide attempt, Trey very much wanted to live through this ordeal so that he could get back home, back to his memories.

He did not want to die without knowing who he was, at the very least.

When their momentum finally stopped, Trey found himself on top of the demon, who snarled and kicked him off with amazing strength. He heard his jacket tear and felt her claws rip at his skin, and although these scratches did not make much of a mark in his skin, they _hurt. _He only barely managed to right himself in the air before he could gain control of his snowboard and hover again, squinting in pain and panting.

There was a sudden, unexpected rumble in the ground that was accompanied by someone's loud yell of anger, and multiple types of weapons sprang from the ground in a beeline toward An's form. The monster just barely managed to dodge the attack, although one spear did manage to scrape a good amount of skin off of her leg by what Trey could see. The blue-haired boy desperately wanted to rush in and finish what Ren had started just now, but he was panting badly, unable to breathe correctly because of the pain in his ribs.

Thankfully, in his place, Chocolove jumped forward, taking the opportunity and slashing at An with his shaft claws. One of them dug into her arm, immediately drawing the unnaturally dark blood from her, and he looked like he was about to repeat the attack when An swiped at him in retaliation, causing him to be cut slightly on the arm as he scrambled backward as quickly as his legs would allow.

An snarled and, now looking nothing like any real person at all and instead like a large, deformed, bleeding, ugly cat with horrific fangs, red eyes, and patchy skin, jumped away with remarkable strength for her injuries and landed a safe distance away. Her landing was weak, though, and she nearly fell onto her side. Now, she was bleeding from a large gash in her right side, in her right leg, and in her upper left arm.

"It would be easier to just give up."

Startled, Trey looked over to see Yoh standing up weakly, holding his white oversouled sword in one hand, his other hanging almost uselessly at his side. He - or someone else - had torn the sleeve that was not in tatters off of his shirt and had tied it around his shoulder wound. His stance was far from threatening, and one of his eyes was squinted, and he looked as if he wanted nothing more than to fall over in the dirt and go to sleep (…or die). However, instead of falling over, he continued.

"I'm sorry that it turned out this way," he apologized, "but you attacked us first when you tried to kill Manta. If you let us go home now and promise not to come after us into our world, we won't kill you."

Trey was startled - he believed that they should just kill An and get it all over with - but something made him stay silent as he turned toward the demon herself to see her reaction.

An's red eyes were wide, and she blinked, but she soon however was barking a long, hideous, darkly amused laugh that sent Trey's skin crawling.

"Are you kidding me?" she snarled, dropping into a crouch and taking a threatening step forward. "You think I'll agree to that? This is the most fun I've had in eons, and I'm not even _close _to being done yet."

With that, Trey watched in a sort of sickened wonder as An's hideous catlike body fell to the ground, ceasing to move after a final twitch.

Perhaps it could have been the time to cheer, for now An was dead, but that was not the case at all.

A much, much larger creature than An, although still catlike but maintaining a greater elegance, stood at the foot of An's bloody body. Its entire body was a spectrum of the different shades of dark red, and it almost looked like it was made out of smoke if not for the scales that Trey saw on its hide.

In shock, Trey forgot to will his snowboard to stay aloft with his spiritual energy, and he fell to the ground, just barely managing to land upright.


	27. Twenty Six

**DISCLAIMER: Shaman King isn't mine. I only own the monsters and ze world they live in :3**

_Time for another installment :P The end is near, but shall it be a triumph, or a tragedy? Only time will tell!_

_XD Enjoy!_

**Twenty-Six**

"Holy shit!" Ren heard Trey swear at the sight of what could only be described as a large, catlike red dragon, but without any wings that Ren could make out.

Ren had to admit, the sight of this…more than odd creature was more than just a little intimidating, but he would never let fear show on his face. Instead, he grimaced against the still throbbing pain in his temple and dug in his heels against the red dirt, unwilling to back down from this final challenge.

The red dragon grinned a devilish grin and spoke, its booming voice rattling the inside of Ren's ears. "You all are such idiots," it chided, its voice incredibly powerful but also feminine at the same time, a dark, sinister feminine. Her jaw moved only up and down incredibly slowly as she spoke, and to Ren, it just seemed so…unnatural. "To fall for such a thing as a simple disguise. Hmph," she huffed, "you didn't even realize that you killed an innocent being just now." She prodded An's bloody body with a clawed, scaly paw that almost had the same diameter as the girl was long.

The dragon's last words struck Ren slightly, but he was not going to be fooled twice - not that he was truly fooled in the first place, mind you. However, he heard more than one slight gasp from around him, and Chocolove called out, "What are you talking about?"

Ren did not think that it was possible for a dragon to be able to, but the red catlike creature smirked, her red eyes glinting. "An really was here to try to kill me and my siblings, after I went to her world and took a few of her clan mates." She prodded the ugly, patchy skinned body once again. Ren noticed that the blood below the (former?) girl's body appeared to be starting to congeal. "She came here just a little after you all did, and I took the initiative and possessed her, quite easily, too. From the first second I've been feeding you just enough information to get by, leading you to through my siblings to this very point." A surprisingly pink tongue poked out of her mouth as she licked her upper lip, seemingly in excitement, and Ren knew that he had a very true thought in the suspicion that she was thinking about eating them.

Ren noticed Yoh staring down the dragon out of the corner of his eye. "Who are you?" Yoh asked, loud and surprisingly calm, although his voice was underlined with anger.

The red cat dragon chuckled, her scaly hide shimmering in the reddish light. "Akane," she answered.

With that, she sprang directly into the middle of the group, and Ren jumped away to avoid both her jaws and claws, as well as her lashing tail. He saw the flash of Lyserg's pendulum as it shot out to wrap around her long neck. She let out a loud roar that rasped in her throat and shook in Ren's ears, and she tried to rip at the wire with her claws, but even Ren knew that the dowser's wire was indestructible. When that failed, Akane opened her giant maw, and a black orb with a dark orange center formed just outside of her mouth, and then, out of it shot a beam that grew the farther away it got from the now shrinking orb. Ren heard a scream as red dust and clods of dirt were thrown into the air, but he took advantage of the confusion and rushed forward before Akane's black and orange orb of energy was exhausted.

The golden-eyed boy held Houraiken aloft and slashed at Akane's haunch, the nearest part of her skin to him. The attack sliced into her skin past her scales, but not by much, although dark scarlet blood immediately spattered out. Ren took the chance and slashed again, forming an X and causing a few of Akane's red scales to shatter and fall to the ground.

He was just about to jump away from the giant cat dragon when she suddenly jerked as if to kick out. He dodged to the side, but her leg never actually kicked; instead, her tail whipped out, catching Ren unawares, and launched him into the air, shredding part of his vest and gouging skin out of his side in the process.

Ren tried to right himself in the air so that the would land on his feet, but even if he could have, he landed on uneven ground and fell to the bottom of a deep ditch. He hissed and stood, looking around only slightly, but enough to realize that he had landed in the ten foot wide section of earth that Akane had basically exploded with her attack. Even the ground still fell hot through his shoes.

The sudden weight of the wound in his side hit him, and he grasped at it, feeling the blood seeping from it. It was not a necessarily deep wound, but it stretched from the back of his ribs to the front, and if he did not get it attended to relatively soon, he might pass out from the blood loss.

_I've faced worse_, he thought, not remembering any time that he really had, but nevertheless, he wiped the excess blood off of his hand and onto his pants before gripping Houraiken in both of his hands and jumping out of the ditch, reentering the fray.

()()()()()()()

Manta did not know how he could do anything to help. In relation to him, his oversouled hammer was rather large, but in relation to this red cat dragon Akane, both he and his oversoul combined were no more than a speck of dust.

Manta did not know if he had ever felt so small before.

He was pretty sure that he knew what he _could _do, though: leave the fighting to those who were better suited to do so. If need be, perhaps he could run in and provide a distraction (hopefully without becoming a meal in the process…), or maybe he could yell out pointers like "heads up" or something. But then again, maybe brute force was not all that was needed to defeat Akane - after all, she _had _basically strung them along for this entire time, using them to her advantage against her siblings, and in the end so that she could kill them all and… eat them. She definitely seemed to have enough smarts, and more than enough brawn (Manta had not been entirely near the direction that Akane had shot her attack at, but he had felt the heat well enough), but maybe she had some sort of weak point like her siblings had.

Manta watched as Chocolove jumped in and swiped at the base of her neck, dodging away just in time to avoid her snapping jaws. Lyserg's pendulum shot out again, but this time he only used it to slice off a bit of Akane's skin under her scales. Trey, up in the air on his snowboard, shot a barrage of icicles at her head, but she opened her maw at him and puffed out a breath of orangey black fire, which Trey had to quickly fly away from in order to avoid getting burned. Ren, who seemed all right but bleeding after being whipped by the cat dragon's tail, was slicing Akane all over the front of her chest. Lastly, Yoh, only able to use one hand, slashed at one of her front legs with his glowing white oversoul sword.

There had to be some way to defeat her. Akane had to have some sort of weakness. Her hide seemed strong, as well as the muscle beneath. Perhaps her eyes were her weak point, like Daichi's single eye had been?

Knowing that he would never be able to jump high enough to reach the red cat dragon's eye, Manta looked for the closest shaman to him, and, seeing Trey in the air a little ways above him and towards Akane, he called the blue-haired boy's name.

"What is it?" Trey asked shortly as he zipped on his snowboard backwards toward Manta. The short boy noticed that he was breathing heavily and that his ripped jacket revealed his lower abs that was as likewise bloody as his chest. With his blue hair all askew without his headband, Manta thought that he looked like some sort of barbarian.

"Aim for her eye," Manta urged. "Her weak point could be like Daichi's!"

Trey nodded curtly, not ever having taken his ebony eyes off of the red cat dragon, and he rushed forward, leaving Manta in his chilly wake. The short boy watched as he neared Akane's head. The dragon caught sight of him and turned slightly toward him. Manta completely expected Trey to circle around her head, but instead, he reared up on his snowboard, an icicle protruding from it, sharp and deadly, and he punctured Akane's eye dead center, blood spurting from the wound.

The red cat dragon roared in pain and thrashed wildly, butting Trey to the ground with her head forcefully but unintentionally, her feet stomping the ground as her tail whipped in the air. The shamans around her quickly jumped back in order to avoid her strong and heavy feet. Growling, Akane whipped her head towards Manta, one eye closed and bleeding, the other large but narrowed.

"Idiot," she spat, "thinking that I have the same weakness as my fool brother."

With that, she opened her maw, another large orange and black orb forming just outside of her mouth.


	28. Twenty Seven

**DISCLAIMER: I don't own Shaman King, only my own OCs.**

_NUUUUU! Second to last chapter! D8 I don't want it to endddddd! *sniffles* whyyyyyy? *Sniffles again* I'll get it over with and update this as well as the next (and last) chapter... *cries* Y'all better enjoy!_

**Twenty-Seven**

Without thinking, Lyserg whipped out his arm, willing his pendulum to zip towards Manta and wrap around the small boy. Just as the dowser pulled back his wire and Manta, Akane let loose her black and orange beam of fire.

Knowing that at the angle he was pulling Manta at that the shot boy would be incinerated, Lyserg willed his wire to fling Manta out of the way of the attack. As soon as his wire let go of the shot boy, Akane's attack struck the dowser's wire.

Instead of perhaps burning Lyserg's wire to smithereens, the orange and black fire engulfed the dowser's oversoul and traveled up it in mere seconds, faster than the green-haired boy could comprehend. Before he had realized what was happening, the clothes on his arm had caught fire.

The dowser shrieked in surprise, pain quickly beginning to blister in his skin. In his panic, he lost control of his oversoul, letting the wire and crystal pendulum fall limply to the ground. He beat at his arm with his other hand, trying to extinguish the flames, but it just would not go out. It hurt, _terribly_, and he fell to the ground to try and beat his arm into the dirt, screaming at the top of his lungs the entire time. He needed to stop this pain, he needed it to end, but it just would not stop…

From somewhere far away, far enough so that it felt like it was a lifetime away, Lyserg heard something or someone growl a threat, but he did not care. He did not care at this point about how he could get the pain to end, he just wanted it gone.

Finally, and as wonderful as if it had come from heaven above itself, powdery and absolutely cold wind and snow fell around Lyserg, and he was incredibly grateful as the snow turned to water from the heat and helped him douse the flames on his arm. The immediate pain lessened considerably, but before he could enjoy it or even thank whoever had saved him from probably losing his arm completely or worse, someone grabbed him with one arm around his middle and he felt himself and the other person being lifted into the air. That was when he realized: it was Trey who had helped him.

"Thanks," the dowser rasped as he felt with his feet for a hold on the blue-haired boy's snowboard, surprised at how useless his voice sounded; he had not even truly known that he had been screaming his lungs out.

"Thank Chocolove," Trey replied, sounding much more terse than usual as he did an abrupt one-eighty turn and pointed with his free hand down to where the aforementioned black shaman was currently dodging Akane's long, glinting claws. "He kept her busy."

Quickly, but also with a bit of care, Trey lowered Lyserg to the ground and let the green-haired boy stand on his own feet. The dowser stumbled a little at first, but managed to catch himself without the need of Trey or Yoh, who had run up in concern.

Knowing that he would have to face it sooner or later, Lyserg grit his teeth and lifted his injured arm. He grimaced at the sight. His arm was an ugly red color, covered in shiny blisters that could have made just about any human turn away or hiss in sympathy, and even a small part of his chest, shoulder, and neck had been affected by the heat, albeit somehow minimally. The dowser's long sleeve had been burned off up to his shoulder, where the usually light fabric was now ragged and brown at the edges. For some reason, the only thing in the vicinity of his arm that had not been damaged in any way was his strap-on pendulum device. In fact, if not for the usual scrapes and bumps on it that had probably come from years of wear, it looked almost brand new, although it was still trailing its wire.

Morphine appeared in front of him, her pink eyes full of concern, and Lyserg gave her a forced smile, but she just frowned and looked worriedly at his arm again. The dowser lowered it a little, but let out an involuntary hiss of agony as it brushed against his side.

"I'm not going to be able to use this arm," he murmured in pain, reaching with his left arm to unlatch his dowsing device so that he could put it on his other arm. It was only when he had his hand actually on the device that he realized that he would not be able to do that with just one hand. He had to do this quickly, though; with he, Yoh, and Trey here, Chocolove, Ren, and Manta were left alone to deal with Akane, who was sure to notice the first trio's absence, probably sooner rather than later.

"Let me help," Yoh and Trey offered at the same time; they looked at each other, and then the blue-haired boy pointedly looked at Yoh's just about useless arm as well as the white spiritual sword in his other hand, and Yoh gave a slight grin in embarrassment and backed off a little bit. With just the proposal, however, Lyserg felt his doubts about Yoh melt away, and he gave a grateful nod to the brown-haired shaman.

More carefully than the dowser thought was possible for him, Trey unlatched Lyserg's device and placed it on the dowser's left wrist, reattaching the straps.

"Thanks," Lyserg said sincerely, ignoring the pain in his burnt arm as he integrated Morphine into the device again, creating oversoul and retracting his wire and pendulum. He had decided that his arm did not matter, not nearly as much as his own life, if they ever managed to defeat Akane and get the hell out of here.

Suddenly remembering how he had gotten the burns in the first place, Lyserg's head snapped up. "What happened to Manta?" he asked in a rush, looking around as if he could try to see past Akane's massive red scaly bulk.

"He's all right," Ren said, coming up quickly with Manta following as quickly as he could in the golden-eyed boy's wake. "All you did was give him a bit of whiplash and draw a little blood with your wire," he added in a slight growl, though more at the fact that they were in this mess in the first place rather than the fact that Manta had gotten hurt.

"I have another idea," Manta blurted out as soon as he came up, before anyone could get the chance to speak.

"Your last idea got Lyserg burned!" Trey argued, waving his arm dangerously close to the dowser's arm, who shrank back a little from the blue-haired boy.

"But this one might work!" Manta failed his arms as well, albeit a little bit more wildly. "If we can cause Akane's orb beam thing to, I don't know, explode or something before its ready, or somehow reflect it back to her, it could hurt her! We aren't doing any damage anyway; her hide is too thick."

"Manta does have a point," Lyserg noted, remembering the terrible pain that had come with the power of the orange and black flames. "The attack doesn't necessarily come out _through _her throat; it's already out of it."

Yoh nodded. "It makes sense."

"_Hey guys!_" Chocolove suddenly called, bringing the group's attention to where the black boy was still dodging, not only Akane's claws, but also her tail and jaws as well. "A little help would be nice!"

"If we're gonna do it, we have to do it as soon as her attack starts," Manta prompted. "None of us has a long range attack powerful enough to hit it right, so we'll have to combine our furyoku."

Before the others could verbally agree, a shout of pain was heard, and, startled, they all looked to see Chocolove fly through the air towards them, blood spurting out from his cheek, neck, and shoulder on his right side. Quickly, Ren darted out and caught him before setting the black boy upright very quickly, almost as if he did not want to touch him for too long.

The red cat dragon turned to them, her long tail lashing from side to side in agitation, her scales becoming ruffled, almost like a bird, her red eyes narrowing to slits. "Pests," Akane hissed, her lizard tongue darting out as she crouched like a cat getting ready to pounce on a particularly juicy piece of prey. "Almost more trouble than you're worth, but you'll all be a good meal."

Her great red maw opened, and the beginnings of a black and orange orb began to appear.

"If we give all our furyoku to Yoh, his sword'll grow!" Manta explained in a rush. "He'll be able to slice Akane's orb before she can fire it!"

"Why me?" Yoh asked in astonishment. No one answered him.

"How what now?" Chocolove asked, looking like he would much rather flee this situation than fight.

"Focus, Chocolove," Lyserg snapped, more forceful than he had meant to be, but, if they lived through this, he would probably be forgiven.

Akane's orange and black orb was about half of its normal size now.

"Quick," Ren urged, turning to Yoh determinedly and deactivating his own oversoul. Immediately, the others followed suit, and Lyserg focused on his own spiritual energy in the pit of his stomach, imagining, no, _pushing _it in Yoh's direction. He almost closed his eyes, but, remembering how he had kept his eyes open when he had thought he was going to meet his end by Jeanne, he forced himself to watch.

Yoh's oversoul, as Manta had thought, was indeed growing considerably. Yoh, only able to hold it in one hand, seemed to be staggering a little bit under the growing weight of the sword, but he managed to hold it aloft. He lifted it as Akane's orb neared its full size, and just before she shot out the immense power that Lyserg was one hundred percent sure that he did _not _want to feel again, Yoh slashed out.

It all happened too quickly for Lyserg to comprehend, but in the next second, his consciousness was gone.


	29. Epilogue

**DISCLAIMER: For the LAST TIME, I do not own Shaman King! Only my own OCs!**

_NUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU! Last chapter of Remember! D8 Whyyyyyyy muuuust it beeee? *sniffles* It feels so saddening! *collapases in grief* While I cry my heart out, enjoy!_

**Epilogue**

Chocolove groaned as he got up. He blinked, the man-made light of the lamp on the nightstand making him squint slightly - he was not used to this, he was used to -

And that was when it hit him, hard. His memories.

Startled and so grateful that he could have cried out in delight - and probably shed a few tears in the process too, which he was close to doing - he shifted through them in his mind, relishing the _full _feeling it gave his brain. He had not realized how empty his mind had seemed while he was in that place, fighting all those monsters, fighting to… to get Manta back! That was why they had gone!

Just barely realizing that he was back in his guest room at the En Inn (how he had gotten from Izumo to the other world was something he knew, but from there to here? Oh, he was confusing himself with his thoughts, but it was _good _kind of confusing), Chocolove scrambled out of his bed, also barely registering the bandages that were wrapped around the side of his head, neck, and chest wounds that he had sustained in the battle with Akane, as well as the ones he had gotten in other battles. The only thing he did notice was Mic right beside him, and he gave a smile to his spirit ally before rushing toward the door. He need to find the others.

He needed to tell a good joke.

()()()()()()

When Lyserg opened his green eyes, he immediately knew that his arm was bound in more bandages than he could count, not that he would want to, unless he became _really _bored. Morphine was right above him, her little pixie eyes concerned but glad as she smiled at him.

"Hey Morphine," he greeted, realizing that his throat was still a bit raspy. "Anyone here to see me up?"

"_Lyserg_!"

Startled, the dowser nearly jumped out of his skin as he gave a jolt, his burnt arm giving a cry of protest in his mind as the skin moved just slightly against the bandages, and he let out a hiss of pain.

"Lyserg!" Ryu repeated, his hair and then his face coming into the dowser's main line of vision. "Are you all right?"

Lyserg gave a painful but amused smile as he slowly pulled himself into a sitting position. "Never felt better."

"Here." Immediately, Ryu placed a tray of tea and biscuits on Lyserg's lap. "I looked up the best recipes for English tea," he added importantly. "When you're done eating, you have to tell me all about what happened."

Lyserg could not help but smile as he took hold of the teacup in his good hand. "I will. Thanks, Ryu."

Ryu began to run his mouth on all things Ryu, and Lyserg took a sip of his tea, recalling the battles that had got him bedridden. With shame, he realized that he had truly been close to killing Yoh, and, not for the first time, he also realized how grateful he was to the Asakura.

()()()()()()

"Onii-chan!"

As soon as HoroHoro woke up, he found himself being hugged to what felt like death by a blue-haired girl.

"P-Pirika?" he stuttered, barely able to breathe with her pressing against his injuries. "You're hurting me."

"Oh! Sorry," Pirika apologized, jumping away. "Faust told me not to do that, he said you have a cracked rib and puncture wounds in your skin. But," she added, placing her hands on her hips importantly, "I'll take care of you until you can get back to training!"

At the mention of 'training,' HoroHoro felt weak inside and not just outside, but he forced himself to smile. "How long were we gone?" he asked. He looked around, realizing that they were in his room at the En Inn. "And how'd we get here? Shouldn't we be in Izumo?"

Pirika shook her head. "No, we came back here quickly, and Anna opened a portal so you could come back here; everyone thought you'd all rather come back here than Izumo. But you were gone for three days!"

"I see." A sudden thought struck HoroHoro, so obvious that he wondered why he had not noticed it before. "I can remember!" he yelled.

"Remember what?" Pirika asked, her interest piqued after she had been startled a bit.

"Everything!" HoroHoro exclaimed, putting a hand up to his head. He realized that there was a headband there again; Pirika must have gotten him one, or (hopefully) washed the one he gave to Yoh. "When I went in there, I couldn't remember _anything_, only Kororo's name - by the way, _Kororo_!" he greeted, hugging his spirit before continuing, "I couldn't even remember _my _name! Hah, Manta decided that they should all call me Trey, whatever that name is. Sounds cool, but not as cool as Usui HoroHoro!" he added with a thumb jerk at himself.

Pirika did not laugh. Instead, she looked at her brother with sad eyes. "Did you forget me too?"

HoroHoro's jaw dropped. "Uh… I-I didn't _mean _to," he replied, digging himself into a deep hole. "I mean, it's not like it was my choice. It's not like I wanted to forget you!"

Pirika suddenly turned angry. "That's it; as soon as Faust says you can get up, you're going to take a five mile run! At least!"

"B-but Pirika…"

Kororo cooed softly and unheard, snuggling against her shaman's torso, happy that he was back to normal.

Pirika was about to argue back at HoroHoro, but suddenly the ice shaman's stomach growled loudly, and the boy suddenly turned to another topic. "Where's Tamao? I want some lunch."

"_Onii-chan_!"

()()()()()()()

"Good morning - actually, good afternoon, Manta-kun."

"Hi, Faust," Manta yawned as he sat up, stiff and sore and wrapped in a few bandages, reminding him of the time when Ryu's gang had beat him up before they all became friends -

Wait. He _remembered_?

He scratched his head, recalling everything that had ever happened to him. He had not realized just how big the patches in his memory had been until now, he had not known just how much he had missed them.

"Please don't do that," Faust chided as he began to unravel one of Manta's bandages to check the wound, the ever-present Eliza at his side. "Scratching might open the wound."

"Sorry," Manta apologized, laying his hand back down at his side as he looked around the room. "We're back here?"

Faust nodded. "Yes. You were all gone for three days, and Anna told me that you all would probably need some medical attention when you came back through her portal - which, by the way, was about fourteen hours ago."

Manta balked. "Fourteen hours?"

Faust nodded again, peering at Manta's wound. "Six patients at once was a bit tricky, but you all should be all right eventually. Lyserg and Yoh have it the worst; Lyserg's burns won't heal for quite a while, and Yoh might not be able to raise his right arm fully if he doesn't agree to get surgery."

Manta blinked. "Surgery?"

Apparently deciding that Manta's wound was clean, Faust accepted fresh bandages from his wife and applied them to the lesion. "Nothing too serious, though. It would be expensive and he would probably need physical therapy to get it back to full working order. And before you ask, I don't want you getting up just yet."

"All right," Manta sighed. "How're the others?"

"They're doing well; I expect them to be up by now," Faust replied.

Manta felt relieved. "That's good." A sudden thought struck him. "I don't know how we got back here… I wonder if my idea worked."

Faust shrugged. "Maybe. What happened, anyway?"

()()()()()()

Ren sat on the windowsill of his room at the En Inn, his golden eyes following a sparrow as it fluttered out of a tree and disappeared into the sky. His body felt a little stiff, especially with the bandages, but he was sure that Faust had done a good job of fixing him up. He had been up for an hour at least, maybe two, but he didn't feel like going anywhere just yet.

He didn't believe how he could have forgotten about his family - although his father had put so much hate into him, Ren was damn proud of being a Tao. But without his memories, his hatred had made him murderous - he couldn't tell if it made him worse than before, but still, Ren wanted to be long past those days. Perhaps he still had a little ways left to go; he couldn't be sure.

"Bocchama?" Bason queried finally.

"I apologize for being so cold to you, Bason," Ren said, even though a Tao would never apologize - unless, however, he sincerely meant it.

"It's all right, Bocchama," Bason quickly replied, seeming to be a little nervous about his shaman's odd mood change.

"I think we'll go visit Jun after this," Ren thought aloud, still staring off into the sunlit summer afternoon. It sounded like a good idea to him.

()()()()()()

Before Yoh even opened his eyes, he wondered how he could have ever forgotten about Manta, how he could have forgotten most things about Anna.

"Yoh-dono!" Amidamaru exclaimed as his master sat up, scratching his head.

"Hey, Amidamaru," Yoh greeted. "You seen my headphones?"

Amidamaru smiled and pointed over to the nightstand, but Yoh left them there. "What happened?" he asked.

"I'm not entirely sure," Amidamaru replied, crossing his arms. "I think Akane's energy exploded, but I wouldn't know if we actually defeated her or not."

Yoh shrugged. "If she comes back again, we'll defeat her."

"Who are you talking about?"

Startled, Yoh looked up to see Anna in the doorway, and he didn't even realize that Amidamaru had faded away to leave the two of them alone.

When Anna didn't get an answer, she let out a small huff. "It doesn't matter. Anyway, Faust says that you'll probably need surgery for your shoulder, and physical therapy-"

"Anna."

Anna blinked at being interrupted, but before she could snap out any sort of order, Yoh continued.

"I didn't realize how much I missed you."

Anna seemed startled at this sudden confession, and she looked away. "I told you if you didn't come back that I'd make you wish I'd kill you. Don't make me change that around and do that to you now."

Yoh chuckled, but before either of them could do anything, Chocolove's voice boomed throughout the entire house.

"How do you stop a charging rhinoceros? You take away his credit card!"

"_CHOCOLOVE!"_

_I'd like to thank the Academy for this... er, wait, wrong speech. I'd like to thank everyone who reviewed, followed, favorited, WHATEVER! Even if you just read the first chapter and went "Screw this," I thank you for taking the time to try out the story! (Even if you don't read this thank-you.) I luffles you all! I hope you enjoyed this story! And to future readers who didn't have the chance to follow and are just reading this whole thing in an hour or something, I THANK YOU AS WELL._

_SAYONARA!_


End file.
